Transparency News 10/22/14
State and Local Stories
A newly formed regional transportation commission is seeking an opinion from the Virginia attorney general's office concerning potential conflicts of interest before requesting bids from banks to manage its finances. Money in the Hampton Roads Transportation Fund is being held by the Virginia Department of Treasury until the Hampton Roads Transportation Accountability Commission sets up its own bank account and hires an executive director. Commission member and state Sen. Frank Wagner, R-Virginia Beach, reiterated the need to get an opinion on possible conflicts of interest so the commission could move ahead with obtaining a banking institution and getting the money for the Hampton Roads Transportation Fund. "In the abundance of caution, given the current atmosphere in politics right now, we just felt getting the attorney general's opinion would provide us that certainty in proceeding ahead," Wagner said of issuing an RFP (request for proposals). When the commission formed last summer, several residents raised concerns that nearly a third of the voting members of the HRTAC are also members of TowneBank's regional advisory boards.
Daily Press
A member of Hampton's City Council said Tuesday that council members should have been asked to weigh in on an agreement among five area police departments to share telephone datacollected during criminal investigations. Council member Donnie Tuck said City Manager Mary Bunting should have asked the seven-member council to grant approval of the program before it was signed off on in early 2013 between police agencies in Hampton, Newport News, Norfolk, Chesapeake and Suffolk. Bunting could not be reached Tuesday to respond to Tuck's statements. But city spokeswoman Robin McCormick reiterated her prior statement that the matter didn't need to go before the council because the $10,000 annual cost of the program to Hampton didn't need appropriating by the council.
Daily Press
As one former VIRGINIA attorney general questioned whether a telephone database kept by five Hampton Roads cities is legal, some law enforcement agencies that participate in it described what is - and isn't - in the system. "It is hard to determine if the police in these jurisdictions are actually violating the law with their data gathering; however, it is hard to imagine how they could conduct the data gathering as it has been publicly reported without at least violating Virginia law, and possibly the 4th Amendment as well," former Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said in an emailed statement. Attorney General Mark Herring said Tuesday that he has read news accounts about the database and thinks it's important to give law enforcement the tools they need. "But of course, at the same time, we have to respect the privacy concerns of citizens and make sure that our privacy laws are followed," he said.
Virginian-Pilot
It looks as if members of the Ben Franklin Privacy Caucus have more work to do. Republican Delegate Richard Anderson, who co-chairs the new bipartisan personal privacy caucus along with Democratic Sen. Chap Petersen, said, “intuitively,” he thinks his fellow caucus members will want to address revelations of a cell phone records database built and maintained by five Hampton Roads-area policing agencies.
Watchdog.org Virginia Bureau
National Stories
Benjamin C. Bradlee, who presided over The Washington Post newsroom for 26 years and guided The Post’s transformation into one of the world’s leading newspapers, died Oct. 21 at his home in Washington of natural causes. He was 93. The most compelling story of Mr. Bradlee’s tenure, almost certainly the one of greatest consequence, was Watergate, a political scandal touched off by The Post’s reporting that ended in the only resignation of a president in U.S. history. But Mr. Bradlee’smost important decision, made with Katharine Graham, The Post’s publisher, may have been to print stories based on the Pentagon Papers, a secret Pentagon history of the Vietnam War. The Nixon administration went to court to try to quash those stories, but the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the decision of the New York Times and The Post to publish them.Washington Post
New York must release data connected to registration and enforcement of its new gun-control law, firearms advocates say in court. Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the New York Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act of 2013, known as the NY SAFE Act, about a month after a lone gunman killed 26 children and staff in a December 2012 rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. In addition to sparking a handful of state and federal lawsuits from Second Amendment enthusiasts, the law became a talking point in New York's gubernatorial campaign. Most prominently, Cuomo's Republican opponent in next month's election Rob Astorino has vowed to repeal the law if elected. On Oct. 6, a trio of lawsuits filed in Albany County Supreme Court challenged the state's refusal to release data relating to the law under the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). The actions name the governor, the New York Division of State Police and State Police Superintendent Joseph D'Amico as defendants.
Courthouse News Service
Last month, Google and Apple both announced that their next mobile operating systems would encrypt user data by default. Both Google and Apple also noted that the new forms of encryption would make it impossible for the companies to "unlock" encrypted phones, including in order to comply with lawful search warrants. These announcements have prompted officials to express concern about the risk that encryption will interfere with government's ability to investigate crime. In response to Apple's and Google's respective announcements, FBI Director James Comey suggested that the new default encryption was being marketed "expressly to allow people to place themselves beyond the law." In an event at the Center for National Policy, White House cybersecurity czar Michael Daniel acknowledged that while "encryption is a best practice in cybersecurity," government is concerned about the threat that information would be "completely beyond the reach of law enforcement." And in a speech at the Brookings Institution last week, Comey spoke extensively of the threat of "going dark" -- the risk that law enforcement would not be able to "access the evidence we need to prosecute crime and prevent terrorism even with lawful authority."
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
President Barack Obama joked at a fundraiser Monday night that while visiting his Chicago home he found junk left on his desk -- “including some unpaid bills” -- that he said he believes were eventually paid. But the official White House transcript of the event omitted the exchange, raising questions about why the quote didn’t appear. A print reporter at the event said Obama noted that “one of the nice things about being home is actually that it's a little bit like a time capsule. Because Michelle and I and the kids, we left so quickly that there’s still junk on my desk, including some unpaid bills -- I think eventually they got paid -- but they're sort of stacked up. And messages, newspapers and all kinds of stuff."
McClatchy
Editorials/Columns
Daily Progress
RECENTLY, The Washington Post reported on police departments that use seized assets—including cash seized in roadside stops of individuals who are never charged with a crime—to bolster their departments, spending seized funds on vehicles, computers and other equipment. But Fairfax County wouldn’t reveal details of its spending of seized assets, which included $1.3 million on weapons and protective gear and $208,000 on electronic surveillance gear. Back in August, the Richmond Times–Dispatch reported on local police departments’ inventory of tactical and military weapons. But the Virginia State Police twice refused to provide even a general listing of the kind of equipment it has purchased. On Oct. 12, FBI Director James Comey went on CBS’ “60 Minutes” and criticized Apple and Google for creating phones that can’t be unlocked by anyone but the phone’s owner, putting those owners, Comey said, “beyond the law.” He likened it to making car trunks that don’t unlock even under court orders. Taken together, these three incidents paint a rather unsettling picture. They all portray a defensive mindset, one in which the police don’t trust the public and believe they are not answerable to it. They protect us, yes, and they do a good job. But they’re not exempt from public questions about their actions or expenditures. They answer to us.
Free Lance-Star
