Transparency News 9/12/14 – Virginia Coalition for Open Government

Friday, September 12, 2014

State and Local Stories

NOTE: The FOIA Council subcommittee studying meeting exemptions will NOT meet Tuesday as scheduled. The 10 a.m. meeting has been canceled. However, the full council will still meet that day at 1:30.

Open government innovator Waldo Jaquith has posted all 1.7 million Virginia corporation records, sorted by age. “It’s still very crude, but you can see a list of all Virginia businesses,” Jaquith tweeted Thursday.
Virginia Businesses

Loudoun County Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio on Wednesday night voted against an ethics-tightening measure that was brought on largely, if not solely, by a special grand jury investigation and removal-from-office petition stemming from allegations Delgaudio misused public assets. Delgaudio (R-Sterling), who was never charged with any wrongdoing in a case alleging he used public resources for political fundraising, was the only supervisor who voted against the now-enacted county ordinance. The new local law makes it a class one misdemeanor for a supervisor or anyone serving on a Loudoun County commission or board to misuse public assets when the value of the asset or assets exceeds $1,000 in a 12-month period.
Loudoun Times-Mirror

National Stories

Today we [Yahoo] are pleased to announce the release of more than 1,500 pages of once-secret papers from Yahoo’s 2007-2008 challenge to the expansion of U.S. surveillance laws. In 2007, the U.S. Government amended a key law to demand user information from online services. We refused to comply with what we viewed as unconstitutional and overbroad surveillance and challenged the U.S. Government’s authority. Our challenge, and a later appeal in the case, did not succeed. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) upheld the predecessor to Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. The Court ordered us to give the U.S. Government the user data it sought in the matter. The FISC and the FISC-R are “secret” courts that oversee requests by the U.S. Government for surveillance orders and other types of legal process in national security investigations. The Court’s hearings and records are closed to the public and typically classified. For example, our role in the 2007-2008 lawsuit remained classified until 2013. In spite of this, we fought to declassify and to share the findings from the case.
Yahoo!

Dropbox announced its first six-month transparency report, revealing 268 law enforcement requests “for user information” and between 0 and 249 national security requests from January to June 2014. Prior to this update, Dropbox only released transparency reports annually. According to Dropbox’s corporate blog, the change was made “so people have up-to-date information and can watch more closely for trends.”
Venture Beat

An Arkansas state judge who acknowledged posting on the Internet confidential information regarding an adoption by actress Charlize Theron was removed from office on Thursday by the Arkansas Supreme Court. Circuit Judge Michael Maggio of Conway, Arkansas, admitted using a pseudonym to disclose information on the adoption, which apparently occurred in January 2012 and was handled by another judge in the same city.
Reuters

In response to online retailers threatening their customers with hefty fines for posting negative reviews, California has passed legislation that bans businesses from trying to contractually prohibit customers from publicly expressing their opinion about the business. Signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown, AB 2365 outlaws so-called “non-disparagement clauses” from contracts that require customers waive their right to express a negative opinion the service they received.
CNET News

D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said Thursday that officers were wrong to interfere with a man who stopped to record an arrest on Sunday along a public street in Washington and that the matter is under investigation. In 2012, Lanier published a detailed directive to officers advising them that citizens had a right to record officers performing their jobs in public, as long as they did not get involved. The cameraman in this case was 20 to 30 feet from the officers. In her statement Thursday, Lanier said her command staff “spent an extensive amount of time to ensure that members were aware of the policy. The video speaks for itself. I was shocked when I saw it. There is no excuse for an officer to be unaware of the policy.”
Washington Post

Four newspapers filed a motion Thursday seeking to unseal documents filed in the federal courts related to the supply chain for drugs that could be used to execute a Pennsylvania man later this month. The American Civil Liberties Union filed the motion to intervene and emergency motion to unseal on behalf of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia City Paper and Guardian U.S. in U.S. District Court in Harrisburg.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A federal judge ruled Thursday that the Pentagon need not make public a document detailing the costs associated with a Guantanamo Bay prison camp used to house so-called high-value detainees. In a ten-page opinion (posted here), U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell rejected the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit Miami Herald reporter Carol Rosenberg brought seeking records of the costs of creating or maintaining the camp. The Defense Department said it found only one record, a single page, responsive to Rosenberg's request. That page was classified in its entirety.
Politico

Federal employees who expose government waste, fraud and abuse are having a tough time in the “most transparent administration in history.” Robert MacLean, a former air marshal, told a House subcommittee Tuesday that managers at the Transportation Security Administration “thumb their nose” at whistleblower protection laws. MacLean, who complained that air marshals were improperly grounded by the TSA, is taking his termination to the U.S. Supreme Court after losing a series of lopsided proceedings at the agency. He said the TSA branded him “an organizational terrorist.” Robert Van Boven, former director of a Veterans Affairs facility in Texas, said, “The (bureaucratic) culture fights transparency and degrades whistleblowers.”
Watchdog.org

Editorials/Columns

Today, you can rest assured that if you run for office, people are going to mock you for just about everything – if you’re attractive, your head will be photoshopped onto a porn star’s body. If you’re overweight, you’ll get some folks who just call you fat, others will write long articles worrying about if you’re healthy enough for a long campaign (that’s just the erudite way of calling someone fat today). If you’re a lawyer, you’ll be blamed for representing unsavory clients. If you’re a businessman and successful, be prepared to be attacked for it. You’ll be hit twice as hard if you fail at business (Grant and Truman can speak to this one). Work for the government, and you’re a parasite sucking on the taxpayer or you’ve never had a real job. They’ll dig up every piece of dirt on you they can, from 20 year old college term papers to that one party you threw that was a little risque. Your personal life will no longer be private. Everything is fair game, because everything nowadays says something about your “character,” or “the public needs to know who they are hiring.” Everybody has a camera, every statement you make will be recorded, and if you step out of line, lose your temper, or fatigue sets in and you make a mistake, the chances of it going viral are pretty good. Everything – literally, everything – you do will be criticized.
Brian Schoeneman, Bearing Drift

Over time federal agencies have flipped the Freedom of Information Act (ACT) on its head. Congress clearly intended the FOIA to be a tool for the public to pry information out of federal agencies. In recent years, however, agencies have blatantly abused opaque language in the law to keep records that might be embarrassing out of the public’s hands forever. One of the clearest examples of this problem has been playing itself out in court rooms over the last few years as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has successfully argued against the release of a 30 year old “draft” volume of the official history of the 1961 Bay of Pigs Disaster. There are few records in the federal government that are seen to merit such secrecy. This draft CIA history is afforded stronger protections than the President’s records, or even classified national security information. Members of the public are able to access similar records generated by the White House as early as twelve years after the President leaves office. Even most classified national security information is automatically declassified after 25 years. Yet, the CIA continues to insist that releasing a draft volume of a history of events that occurred more than 50 years ago, and are already generally understood by the public, must be kept secret.
Amy Bennett, Augusta Free Press

A poll released Tuesday morning found that two-thirds of Virginians paid close attention to the trial . A similar number — 64 percent — thought the trial was mostly fair. The poll, conducted by the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University, began two days before the jury rendered its verdict. More than half of the survey’s respondents for those two nights were unsure about whether the former governor and his wife should be found guilty. Two-thirds thought McDonnell’s behavior and actions were wrong. That last statistic is telling. The poll report says that “this high level of disapproval crossed sexes, party lines and regions of the state.” In other words, we haven’t lost our collective sense of right and wrong after all.
Vivian Paige, Virginian-Pilot