Confidentiality

When the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board finally decides who will be awarded lucrative slots-parlor licenses, it will do so behind closed doors. Although members will eventually take a public vote to award 11 licenses in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and other locations, any discussions and deliberations leading up to it will be held in private. The reason: Talks will involve privileged financial information about the applicants and confidential background information about the people running the companies.

When a child on the Department of Human Services' watch is killed by a caregiver, city and state officials comb through case files and interview social workers to find out what went wrong. But the public never hears the results of those investigations. Officials say the so-called "death reviews" are kept confidential by law to protect children, families and witnesses. Critics contend that the secrecy serves another end: to shield the agency from embarrassment and accountability.

"Art School Confidential" suffers from the same affliction that made "American Dreamz" such a misfire. Satirizing art schools - particularly coming from writer Daniel Clowes, who went to Manhattan's Pratt Institute - is too easy and, for all intents and purposes, pointless. "American Idol," Bush-Cheney and institutionalized art do a fine job of self-parody, thank you very much. To be fair, for the first hour or so, "Art School Confidential" is much funnier than "American Dreamz" (but then, so is a trip to the dentist)

FOR TATTLE'S money, Fox should have told Simon Cowell to pack up his insults and his attitude and scram, but the network caved in to the T-shirt-wearing Brit and signed Cowell for another five years of "American Idol," continuing to allow him to sign "Idol" winners to his label at BMG Records. (People liked Judge Wapner too, Fox, but when he left the air they watched another judge.) Even more exciting for the folks who plan their weeks around the glorified karaoke contest that is "Idol," Fox has new plans to help the people who pine for Clay, Ruben, Kelly, Fantasia and Carrie to keep in touch with every last note over cell phones and the Internet, even adding an additional pay-content section.

As jurors watched testimony and studied evidence during the recent murder trial of Ronald Burris, some appeared to be taking voluminous notes in court-issued notebooks. Others seemed to jot only a few things down. To see jurors with pen and paper in hand is a big change for Pennsylvania's criminal-justice system, which until Aug. 1 prohibited jury note-taking during trials. Now, the state Supreme Court is conducting a two-year test program, allowing jurors to take notes in all criminal cases lasting at least three days.

Actor Bill Cosby is not opposed to protecting the identities of women seeking to testify against him in a sexual assault lawsuit - as long as their lawyers keep their allegations against him secret, too, his attorney said in federal court yesterday. Attorney Patrick O'Connor said Cosby seeks "balanced confidentiality" in the case that now involves a dozen women - nine seeking to remain anonymous. U.S. District Judge Eduardo C. Robreno earlier rejected Cosby's bid for a gag order on the widely publicized case brought by a 31-year-old former Temple University employee.

Attorneys in the civil court sexual-assault case against comedian Bill Cosby are asking a federal judge in Philadelphia to shroud the proceedings in secrecy. In a motion filed last week, Cosby's Philadelphia attorney asked U.S. District Judge Eduardo C. Robreno to protect Cosby from "undue embarrassment" by requiring that "all information uncovered or obtained in discovery . . . be treated as confidential. " "I know he's a public figure, but everybody deserves some privacy," attorney Patrick O'Connor said.

With one dissent, the Chester County Prison Board voted yesterday to accept the resignation - with a confidential severance agreement - of Chester County Prison Warden John H. Masters. "I voted 'no' because I don't think it's appropriate to have confidential agreements . . . especially when they involve taxpaper funds," County Commissioner Andrew E. Dinniman said. Commissioner Donald A. Mancini, head of the seven-member prison-oversight board, read a retirement statement prepared by Masters, 55, who began working at the prison 33 years ago as a corrections counselor.

Pennsylvania Secretary of Education Vicki Phillips yesterday stood by her decision not to release middle school teacher test results for the state's 501 school districts. In a telephone interview, Phillips said that many districts - unlike Philadelphia - have few teachers taking the tests, and that releasing the data could breach teachers' confidentiality. She also contended that the employment records used to compile the data could contain inaccuracies and outdated information that would need to be weeded out by local districts.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is questioning whether the United States is winning its war against international terrorism. "Today, we lack the metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror," wrote Rumsfeld, one of the main architects of the campaign, in a confidential Oct. 16 memo to his top civilian and military advisers. "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than [are] deploying against us?" Rumsfeld later said: "It's pretty clear that the [U.S.