In holding closed meetings on a plan to turn the publicly-owned Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum over to the University of Southern California, the coliseum commission runs the risk of incurring the wrath of the citizens and violating the Brown Act, the state’s open meeting law. Open government experts say that they can legally close the [...]
With both houses of Congress passing versions of the law making it illegal for legislators to engage in insider trading, the public may soon gain access to the financial transactions of their lawmakers and members of the executive branch. The law would require reporting of financial transactions every 30 or 45 days. -db From POLITICO, [...]
The Obama administration is considering a middle way in its attempts to balance the need to protect peer-review in scientific research and the demand for open access on the Web. In the meantime, bills on different sides of the dispute are pending in Congress but are not expected to go far in an election year. [...]
After it came to light that secret legal memos existed backing a “targeted killing” policy, the Obama administration blocked the release of the memos. Writing for the Citizens Media Law Project, Justin Silverman makes a case for transparency particularly in the case that the government is hiding an important policy rationale behind a secrecy shield. [...]
A California state appeals court ruled that federal law does not supersede the state’s anti-spam law. The ruling came in a case contesting the right of an Internet advertising company to use private domain name registrations to prevent recipients from easily identifying the sender. -db From the Metropolitan News-Enterprise, February 27, 2012, by Kenneth Ofgang. [...]
The U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the federal government does not have to release pretrial mug shots under the Freedom of Information Act. The court rejected the argument that releasing the mug shots would serve public oversight interests. -db From the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, February 22, 2012, by [...]
The Central Intelligence Agency has made it harder to use the Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) process to challenge classification status of government records. Classifications have been overturned through the MDR, but now the CIA is charging those using the review process up to $72 per hour even if no documents are found or released. -db [...]
A study of leaks of classified information says that the friction caused by interests in keeping national security secrets and in the public’s right to know can be mitigated to some extent through improved understanding and management achieved partly through dialogue between the government and media. WikiLeaks has changed the secrecy terrain, writes Steven Aftergood [...]
As early as this fall, the U.S. government could have in place an interagency project using up-to-date technology to implement the Freedom of Information Act. New technologies could increase proactive disclosure, speed responsiveness and cut backlogs. -db From a commentary in OMB Watch, February 7, 2012. Full story
A federal district judge ruled that the government had to release a 500-page report about alleged prosecutorial misconduct in the case against the late Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska for failing to list improper gifts in Senate ethics forms. Stevens was convicted of the charges and lost his seat in the senate, but the conviction [...]
A California appeals court ruled that cities cannot withhold the name of a police officer involved in shootings unless they provide evidence of a specific threat against the officer. The judge said it’s common practice to identify officers and there was a strong public interest in knowing who was involved in shootings. -db From the San [...]
The First Amendment Coalition and a Sacramento community group have filed suit against the Sacramento City Council for access to Council emails and other records concerning a controversial redistricting plan for Council districts that was adopted last summer. The suit, filed Friday by FAC and Eye on Sacramento, a local nonprofit, grows out of the [...]
In a case pitting a forest products company against the California Department of Agriculture, the Sacramento Bee sought discovery material filed with the court. A federal district judge ruled that once the materials became judicial records attached to a motion for summary judgment, the public and press should be granted access. -db From The Reporters [...]
The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the Obama administration to force them to release records related to the deaths by drone attacks of three U.S. citizens in Yemen. The administration cited national security in denying the request for the documents under the Freedom of Information Act, but the ACLU said the drone program should [...]
In a narrowly tailored decision, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the public, media and same-sex marriage proponents could not gain access to the videotapes of the trial over Proposition 8. The court said that the trial judge had assured Prop 8 backers that the trial videotape would not be made public, [...]
The Hanford City Council has so far not released an anonymous packet of documents to the public and may never. The documents make allegations against city leaders which the council discussed in closed meetings. Jim Ewert, legal counsel for the California Newspaper Publisher Association, said the council may be on safe ground in denying public [...]
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press did not like a federal appeals decision upholding a law restricting access to Virginia state records by non-residents. The court ruled that the restriction was not unconstitutional. The Reporters Committee felt the court should have considered the effect of the restriction on smaller journalistic enterprises. -db From [...]
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that non-residents have no right to Virginia public records under the state’s freedom of information law. Non-residents were challenging the law claiming it was unconstitutional. The two non-residents who sued the state were seeking child support documents and real estate tax assessment records. -db From The Reporters [...]
A federal district judge ruled that the FBI could not use a Freedom of Information Act exclusion in denying access to records about a civil rights era photographer who was an informant for the agency. The judge said the FBI confirmed the relationship with their response to the FOIA request so could not then withhold [...]
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has sued the Justice Department and the FBI claiming that they refuse to release information on the FBI’s surveillance of citizens who have shown support for or interest in WikiLeaks. EPIC made the Freedom of Information Act complaint in federal court. -db From the Courthouse News Service, January 31, [...]
Two years after President Barack Obama ordered government agencies to come up to speed on declassifying 400 million pages of old records, there has been little progress. The failure to make more progress is a sign that the secrecy system considers itself immune from presidential orders, writes Steven Aftergood of Secrecy News. -db From a [...]
Long Beach and a police officers group are asking an appeals court to overturn a lower court ruling that the city must provide the names of officers involved in shootings. After a controversial shooting of an unarmed man in Long Beach in 2010, the Los Angeles Times asked the city to provide the identities of [...]
The Justice Department wants a federal judge to allow them to withhold photos of the death of Osama bin Laden on the grounds that releasing the photos could incite violence against the U.S. The DOJ disputed the arguments of Judicial Watch that making the photos public would cause harm to national security by revealing intelligence [...]
Safety Research and Strategies is suing the federal government for details of their investigation into the sudden acceleration of a Prius last year. Federal regulators have found no evidence that electronic systems were the cause of the unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles, but Safety Research is not satisfied with that conclusion. -db From The New [...]
A Santa Monica math teacher lost a lawsuit in a California appeals court to keep a sexual harassment complaint against him private. The court found substantial public interest in the release of details of the investigation into a parent’s charge that the teacher sexually harassed his thirteen-year-old daughter. The charge was not fully substantiated. -db [...]
After tipsters told the Action Alameda News that the Alameda Police Department was trying to cover up a robbery at a restaurant in December of 2011, the newspaper made a public records request on the incident. The police denied that there was a coverup and denied access to 911 tapes saying that they were exempt [...]
A U.S. district judge will hear arguments on a challenge by the Sacramento Bee to the sealing of arguments in a legal dispute between the federal government and Sierra Pacific Industries over how a 2007 wildfire began and who should pay for the destruction. Sierra Pacific disputes the contention that the fire was sparked by [...]
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will get another chance to protect the identity of informants in the investigation of a real estate kickback scheme in Hawaii. HUD had lost a round in an Hawaiian court when a three-judge panel said the agency failed to explain why it redacted the names of informants [...]
An agent for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration lost a ruling in federal appeals court when the court ruled that a video that went viral of his accidentally shooting himself during a public lecture did not violate the Privacy Act. The agent claimed that the video was part of an investigation into the shooting and [...]
A federal judge in Washington, D.C. found that the Justice Department could not withhold files from the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics of their criminal investigation of U.S. Rep. Don Young of Alaska. The Justice Department did not file any charges against Young and withheld the files on privacy grounds. -db From the Anchorage [...]
A new House bill to block public access to publicly-funded research is nothing new. Efforts have been underway since 2008 to roll back the law that requires public access. The book publishing industry backs the bill claiming that the current policy of posting public funded findings online undercuts their business. From The Scientist, January 9, [...]
The Obama administration is no longer fighting a battle to avoid disclosing legal memos over plans to force local law enforcement to participate in Secure Communities, an immigration enforcement program. The administration also admitted that it gave a federal judge false information last year in one of the hearings on the case. -db From a [...]
California Senator Leland Yee of San Francisco intends to introduce a number of bills in 2012 to give the public greater access to the workings of their government. The bills include SB 1000 keeping the California Public Utilities Commission from withholding information about their regulation of PG&E responsible for a recent catastropic fire and SB [...]
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that court documents in case brought by Apple against a maker of Mac computer clones were public. Apple claimed that the documents contained “compelling trade secrets” about the Mac OS X operating system. -db From The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, January 6, 2012, by [...]
The Anaheim City Attorney is investigating an e-mail sent by a planning department official ordering employees to purge unnecessary records at the risk of disciplinary action. The order came after the Voice of OC filed a California Public Records Act request for communications to and from city council members. -db From the Voice of OC, [...]
A federal district judge ordered the release of court records relating to a lawsuit brought by a hospital system alleging that another hospital group had conspired against them. The hospital system refused to release details of an agreement settling the case claiming that the information was confidential, containing vital business information about future plans. -db [...]
There were four cases over the Freedom of Information Act that promoted transparency in 2011 according to the Electronic Freedom Foundation. The cases were Milner v. Department of Navy, FCC v. AT&T, Islamic Shura Council of S. Cal. v. FBI and National Day Laborer Organizing Network v. ICE. From a commentary for the Electronic Frontier [...]
Tags: ACLU, Citizens United, EFF, FCC v. AT&T, FOIA, FOIA Exemption 2, immigrants Secure Communities, Milner v. Navy, National Security, NDLON v. ICE, privacy rights, Shura Council v. FBI, surveillance, Wired
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. ruled that the CIA had the right to refuse to confirm or deny existence of records named in a Freedom of Information Act request. The refusal is called a Glomar response. The CIA had refused to provide information to a US. citizen seeking information on his [...]
A recent study found that under the Obama administration, in 2010 federal agencies used exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act 33 percent more than they did under George W. Bush in 2008. Watchdog groups are now trying to hold Obama to his pledge to make his administration the most transparent and accountable in history. [...]
The Central Intelligence Agency says it will now consider a Freedom of Information Act request for documents on Open Source Works, a new CIA open source intelligence division. An historian had asked for the charter of Open Source Works with the reply that the CIA could not confirm or deny the existence of the charter. [...]
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