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National Stories
A federal judge in New York has rejected a bid to restore access to National Security Council records under the Freedom of Information Act. U.S. District Court Judge Eric Vitaliano, who sits in Brooklyn, said in a ruling dated Tuesday that he saw no reason to depart from a 1996 D.C. Circuit ruling that found files beyond the reach of FOIA on the grounds that the NSC's primary role is to advise the president.
Politico
Champaign, Ill., City Attorney Fred Stavins said on Tuesday night that the city does not plan to appeal an appellate court's decision that it must turn over text messages to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request The News-Gazette filed in 2011. Stavins said there are "very few documents" to produce, but the city will comply with a ruling that text messages sent and received on a council member's private device during a city council meeting are public records.
News-Gazette
A lawyer for James Risen, an author and a reporter for The New York Times, has asked Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to withdraw a subpoena requiring him to testify about a confidential source, in light of the Justice Department’s new guidelines for obtaining information from journalists in investigations. On July 19, a federal appeals court ruled that Mr. Risen must testify in the criminal trial of a former C.I.A. official, Jeffrey Sterling, who is charged with leaking classified information.
New York Times
A New York City family had no basis to sue a photographer who surreptitiously captured images of his neighbors from his own apartment window and later displayed and sold the same images at a public art exhibition, a New York trial court judge ruled Monday. While New York's civil rights law protected the Foster family and Svenson’s other subjects from invasions of privacy for commercial purposes, Judge Eileen A. Rakower dismissed the case after deciding that Svenson’s work was an artistic expression protected by the First Amendment, New York state law and court precedents.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
A federal judge has ordered that several documents be unsealed in a lawsuit between Idaho inmates and Corrections Corporation of America just days before a hearing is set over whether the private prison company should be held in contempt of court. Inmates at the Idaho Correctional Center, represented by the ACLU of Idaho, brought the lawsuit in 2010, contending the CCA-run prison was so violent that prisoners called it "Gladiator School."
Associated Press
Following cries of foul play unconstitutionality (by hiding how evidence is obtained the DEA denies defendants a fair trial), the Justice Department Wednesday said it would look into the covert unit known as SOD (Special Operations Division). A DOJ investigation hardly satisfies privacy and civil liberties advocates; representative agents from almost every government law enforcement agency, including the NSA, CIA and FBI, helped with SOD programs — is it possible that the DOJ genuinely only heard about the shady unit when Reuters published its investigation?
Salon
Weeks of revelations about secret U.S. surveillance programs could stymie progress on negotiations over new laws and regulations meant to beef up the country's defenses against the growing threat of cyber attacks, cyber security experts say. Current and former cybersecurity officials say they worry the ongoing disclosures about secret National Security Agency spying programs by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden could trigger hasty or rash actions by Congress or the private sector, hampering efforts to enact an effective cyber policy.
Reuters
The New York City Police Department has agreed to purge a database of names and addresses of people stopped by police under the NYPD's controversial stop-and-frisk program but later cleared of criminal wrongdoing. The department will scrub the information as part of a settlement ending a lawsuit filed in 2010 in state court by the New York Civil Liberties Union, which announced the agreement on Wednesday.
Reuters
Mississippi State Rep. Sonya Williams Barnes is urging legislators who serve on a state watchdog panel to release a report on state port expansion. The Legislature's Joint Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review has completed the report on the port's management of $570 million in federal funds for restoration and expansion. A big question has been whether the work will produce the 1,200 jobs required in exchange for federal funding provided through the Community Development Block Grant Program. PEER Director Max Arinder said the report has been on the committee's agenda since June, but no decision on its release has been made. PEER met Tuesday without official action, but convenes again this morning.
(Gulfport) Sun Herald
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