Press freedom took a hit in the United States in 2011 according to Reporters Without Borders who ranked contries according to their performance.

The U.S. now shares 47th place in a tie with Romania and Argentina. Much of the drop may be based on the harassment, beating and arrest of journalists covering Occupy Wall Street protests. -db

From the Courthouse News Service, January 26, 2012, by Adam Klasfeld.

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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 Daily News, January 11, 2012, by Richard Maurer.

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If you’re worried about natural gas pipelines running near your home or business, prepare for a long battle to get key information from California’s Public Utilities Commission. Under a 60-year-old law, vast numbers of documents — including regulatory reports and safety studies — are secret, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

What’s more, PG&E often has the last word on what the public will be able to see.

A Chronicle survey shows that most states routinely make such documents available to the public.

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A former Manhattan Beach city manager is suing the city for disclosing records that he claims were supposed to be secret as part of a severance package.

The city attorney said the city was acting in the public interest in its commitment to transparency. The former city manager felt that allegations of sexual harassment made in an anonymous letter would hurt his chances for employment. -db

From the Easy Reader, November 23, 2011, by Alene Tchekmedyian.

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The Los Angeles Unified School District is thwarting the public’s right to know how teachers rated in value-added evaluations saying that the disclosures would be “embarrassing and painful” to teachers.

Parents have the right to know how students are faring under their teachers argues Jim Newton in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times. -db

From an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, November 28, 2011, by Jim Newton.

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The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed disclosure of signatures for a Washington referendum to overturn a law granting domestic partners the same rights as married couples.

The opponents of gay marriage had argued that they would be subject to threats, harassment and reprisals if the signatures were released to the public. -db

From the Courthouse News Service, November 23, 2011, by Barbara Leonard.

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Because in 2007 Penn State was granted immunity to Pennsylvania’s public records law, the university can keep information out of public reach, but that could change as state legislators question the status quo.

Currently the university is under no legal mandate to release records of any transactions concerning the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse except to law enforcement. -db

From The Patriot-News, November 15, 2011, by Charles Thompson.

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A federal district judge ruled that the Justice Department does not have to provide a Muslim civil rights group with FBI investigative guidelines.

The judge held that revealing the guidelines would compromise the FBI’s ability to conduct investigations and prosecutions. -db

From  The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, November 15, 2011, by J.C. Derrick.

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The public may never know the truth about alleged sexual harassment by Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain because Cain’s former employer, the National Restaurant Association, signed confidential settlement agreements sealing the lips of all involved.

These confidential agreements, argues Wesley J. Smith of the Discovery Institute, often do great harm by shielding dangerous people and products. -db

From a commentary in the San Francisco Chronicle, November 15, 2011, by Wesley J. Smith.

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Donors to Prop. 8, California’s anti same-sex-marriage initiative, have no right to remain anonymous, a U.S. District Court judge has ruled.

Backers of Prop. 8 had argued that campaign contributors could be subject to harassment and threats unless they were allowed dispensation from disclosure laws. But U.S. District Judge Morrison England disagreed, arguing that Prop. 8 supporters, who won 7 million votes in 2008, could not make the case that they were a persecuted group.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, a lawyer for Protect Marriage and the National Organization for Marriage said he would appeal.

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France is shutting down citizen access to a website that allows posting of videos of police misconduct. It is the latest effort to limit online speech.

The latest attack on transparency came two years after an Amnesty International report that the country does a poor job of investigating police killings, beatings and racial abuse. -db

From a commentary for the Citizens Media Law Project, November 3, 2011 by Justin Silverman.

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Reacting to pressure from legislators and open government advocates, the Department of Justice withdrew a proposal to allow government agencies to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests with false denials. The proposal would have allowed them to deny that records exist when they actually did. -db

From a press release from the American Civil Liberties Union, November 3, 2011.

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After uncovering $60 billion in contractor waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Commission on Wartime Contracting buried its internal records for 20 years.

The Commission did release 8 reports and publish recommendations to avoid waste and fraud, but the decision to block access to the internal records and source material prevents the public and nonprofits from building on the work of the Commission, writes Jake Wiens, an investigator for POGO.  -db

From a commentary for the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), November 1, 2011, by Jake Wiens.

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A federal judge ruled that an  immigrant rights group could obtain an internal memo from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) concerning the legal justification for the Secure Communities deportation program.

Using the Freedom of Information Act, the group sued five federal agencies for the memo. -d

From the Courthouse News Service, October 26, 2011, by Adam Klasfeld.

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Video recordings of last year’s same-sex marriage trial in California will remain under seal pending further review, a federal appeals court has decided.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said it must determine whether release of the videos would serve the public interest without compromising the safety of witnesses for Prop. 8, the state initiative that banned same-sex marriage.

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A federal judge ruled that an author could proceed with his lawsuit against the State Department and other government agencies who allegedly ignored a requirement to provide Freedom of Information Act requesters estimates of the time it would take to fulfill requests.

The author was after information about the Iraq oil industry. -db

From Politico, September 29, 2011, by Josh Gerstein.

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The Obama administration has reduced the backlog of  Freedom of Information Act requests but still faces a large number of unfulfilled requests. Under a new plan, the administration wants to improve the processing of the requests and also address other crucial issues in government openness including strengthening whistleblower protections and making more information available.

Writing for The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Kirsten Berg quotes John Wonderlich of the Sunlight Foundation who likes the plan but sees great challenges ahead, “The experience of the Open Government directive has shown us that implementation is much harder than getting a political declaration. He has got a fantastic declaration, but the challenge now is moving into the implementation.” -db

From a commentary from The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, September 26, 2011. by Kirsten Berg.

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The Obama administration said it would use advances in technology to expedite Freedom of Information Act requests.

The new pledge is part of an international effort to provide citizens greater power to participate in government. -db

From Broadcasting & Cable, September 20, 2011, by John Eggerton.

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When it comes to picking finalists for top jobs on state university campuses, Cal State University trustees have decided it’s a private matter.

On Wednesday trustees of the 23-campus system voted 15-1 to eliminate a long-standing requirement that finalists for campus president openly visit the school to meet with students and campus leaders. The visits allow the school community and the public to  assess the competing candidates.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Chancellor Charles Reed argued that potential candidates might not come forward without a guarantee of privacy. But faculty organizations contend that a public university system should be more concerned with transparency.

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The Obama administration released a report about their progress in increasing transparency. They cited increased grants of Freedom of Information Act requests; the declassification of sensitive data; and the use of technology to improve access to government spending and information on government agencies.

The report was well-received by open government advocates, but they noted that much more needs to be done. -db

From The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, September 16, 2011, by Jamie Schuman.

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The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has asked the Supreme Court to make every document in their court open to the public unless it designates otherwise.

A New York Times editorial backs the suggestion noting that in the last 18 years the court has increased the practice of sealing records, a troubling trend. -db

From an editorial in The New York Times, September 18, 2011.

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Newspaper associations and public interest groups are protesting a move by the Obama administration to withhold a data bank created by Congress in 1986 to assist hospitals and state licensing boards to check doctor’s records for discipline and malpractice.

The records had been useful in creating laws to protect the public as reported by Blythe Bernhard and Jeremy Kohler in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.”The Post-Dispatch used the public file last year in an investigation of the lax and secret system of doctor discipline in Missouri. The investigation led to a new law that gives the state healing arts board more power and gives patients more information about their doctors,” they wrote.

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 15, 2011, by Blythe Bernhard and Jeremy Kohler.

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Why is okay to withhold information transferred to electronic format when the same information in document form is available under the California Public Records Act( (CPRA)? That is the question the California Supreme Court will consider in reviewing a Court of Appeal decision that Orange County could charge the Sierra Club $300,000 for the Orange County GIS basemap of public property information, effectively blocking public access.

The lower court had ruled that transferring the property data to “computer software” qualified the data as an exemption to the CPRA. -db

From a commentary for the Electronic Freedom Foundation, September 16, 2011, by Mark Rumold.

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The Internet era has eroded a Supreme Court decision (Department of Justice v. Reporters’ Committee) allowing governments to deny rap sheets requested under the Freedom of Information Act. Now it is possible to tap into a national database provided by the federal courts to obtain the information.

In an opinion a federal judge has even acknowledged the possibility of using the national database, a sure indication that that privacy exemption has been seriously weakened. -db

From a commentary in Politico, September 7, 2011, by Josh Gerstein.

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Although the 9/11 Commission ordered that their investigative records of al Qaeda’s attack on the United States should be opened to the public in 2009, the National Archives has not yet released the vast majority of the information.

John Berger, an author who maintains a website with 9/11-related documents, said to withhold the information is not in the public interest since scholars and journalists are kept from analyzing the information.”You can point to things produced from declassified documents that help our understanding and the government’s understanding of urgent problems,” he said. -db

From Reuters, September 9, 2011, By Scot J. Paltrow.

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A federal appeals court ruled that the U.S. Department of Justice must release case docket information in criminal cases where the government used cellphone location tracking data without a warrant.The American Civil Liberties Union used the Freedom of Information Act starting in 2007 in a bid for the information.

The ACLU was concerned that the warrants were not supported by probable cause and contravened a U.S. Supreme Court ruling from 1989. -db

From The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, September 7, 2011, by You-Jin Han.

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While the Obama administration is making some progress in breaking the backlog of Freedom of Information Act requests, the National Security Archive says that there are still requests that go back over a decade and even to World War II.

There are reasons for the slow pace but none that make much sense or could justify a delay of over 60 years. -db

From an editorial in The New York Times, August 27, 2011.

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After receiving little information from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to its Freedom of Information Act request for information on the national food stamp program, the Argus Leader filed a lawsuit to obtain the records.

The newspaper wants the records in its investigation of businesses profiting from the food stamp program and possible fraud. -db

From the Argus Leader, August 27, 2011, by Jonathan Ellisby.

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Democratic Assemblyman Anthony Portantino wants to repeal the Legislative Open Records Act that gives lawmakers legal exemptions from disclosing certain records. The proposed bill would make the legislature subject to the broader California Public Records Act.

“Assembly leaders have hidden documents and expenditures from the public long enough. It is hypocritical of the Legislature to say it embraces open government when it is fighting so hard to keep the public in the dark on how it operates. A secret budget is by its very nature a corrupt budget,” said Portantino. -db

From the Los Angeles Times, August 25, 2011, by  Michael J. Mischak.

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The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the FBI and the National Security Agency for withholding information about the eGuardian monitoring system that collects information on “suspicious activity” that may include taking photos of important buildings. The ACLU has been unsuccessful in its attempts to acquire the information through the Freedom of Information Act.

The ACLU writes in their court filing, “these records will significantly contribute to the public’s understanding of how local, state and federal authorities have interpreted the broad mandate of the eGuardian program, how they have used the potentially invasive ‘suspicious activity’ reporting system, and whether effective safeguards are in place to protect Americans against unwarranted privacy invasions or discriminatory surveillance based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or protected beliefs or activities.” -db

From the Courthouse News Service, August 28, 2011, by Iulia Filip.

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Texas Gov. Rick Perry, whose campaign for president has faulted Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke for purported failure to open the workings of the Fed to public view, has “adopted policies that shroud his own office in a purposeful opaqueness that confounds prying reporters – or any member of the public questioning his policies,” the Houston Chronicle reports.

Perry’s approach contrasts with another former Texas governor, George W. Bush, who revealed voluminous records of his appointments, contacts with lobbyists and campaign contributors, and time spent on the job, the Chronicle said.

Many of the documents Perry has withheld relate to contracts involving state money and companies headed by his supporters.

Perry’s office says he is following the law and has championed transparency by posting the check register for the governor’s office online.

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A federal district court in Washington, D.C. ruled that White House visitor logs are a part of the public record and subject to the Freedom of Information Act. The Secret Service had argued that the logs were not agency records under the FOIA but White House records so under the Presidential Records Act. It also cited national security issues in denying requests for the log.

The court ordered the Secret Service to review the logs for possible FOIA  exemptions and then to release all non-exempt  logs. -db

From The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, August 18, 2011, by Christine Beckett.

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The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Wisconsin prison rule keeping prisoners from receiving documents under the state’s public records act that do not refer to the prisoner. The prisoner had circumvented the public records act by asking his grandmother to obtain the documents. -db

From the First Amendment Center, August 12, 2011, by Douglas E. Lee.

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Amid complaints from trial judges, a proposal to ease rules limiting use of cameras in California courts has stalled.

The proposal by the state Judicial Council’s Bench-Bar-Media Committee would have allowed cameras in court unless a judge specifically ruled otherwise and would have provided for appeals to a higher court.

But after the idea ran into opposition from trial judges, the committee withdrew the plan, which would have required approval by the Judicial Council.

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For its ambitious use of freedom of information laws to generate high impact news stories, the Associated Press has won the 2011 Eugene S. Pulliam First Amendment Award.

In a press release, the AP said it filed more than 1,000 public records requests in 2010 and 60 legal appeals of rejections. In 2009, the AP filed more than 1,500  requests and made 40 appeals.

The award, which carries a $10,000 prize, is sponsored by the Sigma Delta Chi Foundation and will be presented to the AP Sept. 27 at the Excellence in Journalism 2011 conference in New Orleans.

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A federal judge criticized the CIA for ignoring a court order asking the agency to preserve videos of interrogations but did not hold it in contempt. The American Civil Liberties Union had brought the contempt motion in ACLU v. Department of Defense, a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit begun in 2004.

An ACLU spokesperson said, “Yet again, the CIA will get away with denying the public of the best evidence of torture.” -db

From The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, August 3, 2011, by Aaron Mackey.

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An editorial in the Orlando Sentinel criticizes Belvin Perry, the judge in the Casey Anthony trial for withholding names of the jurors until October, saying the order “mocks the state’s constitutional guarantee of open government.”

The editorial says Perry took on responsibilities not his own and argued that transparency worked in the public interest, “Perry cited reports that Anthony trial jurors had been threatened by people outraged at their not-guilty verdicts. We appreciate his concern, but the safety of jurors is fundamentally the responsibility of police, not judges.

There are practical reasons to release jurors’ names promptly after verdicts; it’s not just the principle involved. For example, a hidden fact about a juror’s background or contacts that might have tainted a verdict is more likely to come to light under public scrutiny.” -db

From an editorial in the Orlando Sentinel, July 31, 2011.

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The judge who presided over the trial of Casey Anthony, the Florida woman acquitted of murdering her two-tear-old daughter, blasted the media while ordering that the names of jurors be kept from the media until Oct. 25.

Writing for Reuters, Barbara Liston paraphrased the judge, Belvin Perry, “Perry lamented what he said was the blurring of lines between news and entertainment, saying court proceedings have become just another form of mindless entertainment and a revenue source for broadcast networks.” -db

From Reuters, July 27 2011, by Barbara Liston.

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A bill proposed by Senators Roy Wyden and Mark Udall would require the U.S. intelligence chief to admit to interpreting the Patriot Act to give the government massive domestic surveillance powers not granted by Congress. In a letter last week to Wyden and Udall, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper admitted to the secret legal interpretations and pledged to make the interpretations public.

In their proposal, Wyden and Udall wrote, “It is critical that officials of the United States not secretly reinterpret public laws in a manner that is inconsistent with the public’s understanding of such laws and not describe the execution of such laws in a way that misinforms or misleads the public.” -db

From a commentary in Wired, July 28, 2011, by Spencer Ackerman.

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The Justice Department and higher education organizations filed briefs in federal court backing the University of Illinois in its refusal to release student records. The Chicago Tribune is seeking the records of students as part of a series of stories about alleged favoritism shown to some applicants to the university.

The Justice Department noted that any university receiving federal funds was prohibited by a federal privacy law to release specific student records such as grades, test scores and parents’ names that the Tribune seeks. -db

From  the Chicago Tribune , July 21, 2011, by Antonio Olivo.

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