Transparency News 11/1/16
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
State and Local Stories
A federal judge quietly dismissed an aspect of University of Virginia administrator Nicole Eramo’s $7.5 million defamation lawsuit Monday, saying the now-retracted Rolling Stone article at issue in the litigation did not defame her by its implications. Judge Glen Conrad made the ruling in his chambers before the 10-person jury empaneled to hear the case returned to the courtroom. Rolling Stone, its publisher and author Sabrina Rubin Erdely are fighting the case on the grounds that Erdely’s controversial November 2014 article “A Rape on Campus” did not personally damage Eramo, who claims her health, reputation and career suffered as a result of Erdely’s piece.
The Daily Progress
Twin state efforts to boost online applications and to cross-check voter rolls with state and national databases have changed the way Virginians register to vote now, state Department of Elections data show. Ahead of the last presidential election, not a single Virginia voter registration was completed electronically. Last month, nearly three-quarters were, for a total of more than 360,000. Just in October ahead of the deadline to register for the Nov. 8 election, the department received 153,000 online voter registration applications — an average of about five per minute. The state's stepped up cross-checking of voter records with other states, driver's license records and national databases of deaths and address changes has also brought more recently arrived Virginians onto voting rolls, Edgardo Cortés, commissioner of the state Department of Elections, said.
Daily Press
Winchester will begin posting City Council meetings on its website beginning Nov. 8, according to a city newsletter. Council work session and regular meetings are two separate meetings, but occur back-to-back on the second and fourth Wednesday every month at Rouss City Hall. Agendas for each can be found on the city’s website. Regular meetings have always been televised. Work sessions were only televised for about a year — from 2012 to 2013. But, council decided in September to begin airing the work sessions again. Multiple councilors said at that time that constituents often tell them they’ve watched the regular meetings on television, but didn’t see much worth watching. That is because regular meetings often serve as a formality, where decisions are solidified after issues have been discussed in closed meetings and work sessions. According to the newsletter, the meetings will now also be streamed live on the city’s website. “After the meeting, the videos will be made available on the portal for playback,” the newsletter states.
Winchester Star
National Stories
The 911 call began with about six seconds of Arabic, and then Omar Mateen switched to English: “I want to let you know, I’m in Orlando, and I did the shooting.” The words, among the first from four recordings that the City of Orlando released on Monday, were spoken on June 12 as Mr. Mateen laid siege to the Pulse nightclub here. And in an array of tones — even and calm at first, then at turns impassioned, incredulous and threatening — Mr. Mateen used his conversations with a dispatcher and a police negotiator to claim that the attack was the work of the Islamic State and to warn, deceptively, of nearby bombs. Although the city published transcripts of the conversations in September, Monday was the first time that the public heard Mr. Mateen as he talked with the authorities amid his assault on the gay nightclub. Forty-nine people, as well as Mr. Mateen, were killed.
New York Times
There were 5,680 invention secrecy orders in effect at the end of Fiscal Year 2016. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office reported that 121 new secrecy orders were issued in 2016, but also that 20 existing orders were rescinded, for a net increase of 101 over the year before. The latest figures were released under the Freedom of Information Act.
Secrecy News
The Hartford region's water-and-sewer agency has invoked a little-used federal Department of Homeland Security anti-terrorism restriction to block citizens' access to what once was public information about its water-supply system. Critics are blasting the legal maneuver by the Metropolitan District, known as the MDC, to have its water supply plan designated as "protected critical infrastructure information" by the homeland security department — under a post-9/11 program designed to prevent damage to public facilities by terrorists. The critics call it an "end-run" to evade the state Freedom of Information Act by lumping non-sensitive information, such as simple supply water-capacity statistics, in with technical information about system controls that might be useful to wrongdoers.
Hartford Courant
Flexing its enforcement muscle in court for the first time, the Office of Open Government has filed suit against the Mayor’s Advisory Commission on Caribbean Community Affairs. D.C. law gives the independent Office power to go to court to enforce the D.C. Open Meetings Act. According to the lawsuit filed in D.C. Superior Court, the Commission failed to post agendas or minutes of 11 meetings this year as the law requires. The lawsuit also says the Commission continued to meet without following the legal requirements despite repeated communications and offers of help.
DC Open Government Coalition
The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has revealed that a worker took over 10,000 activity and staff records with him sometime in November 2015, shortly before he retired. The unnamed worker copied a “large number” of files to two thumb drives and, when asked about the data, couldn’t find the drives to give them back.
Engadget
The Daily Progress
Twin state efforts to boost online applications and to cross-check voter rolls with state and national databases have changed the way Virginians register to vote now, state Department of Elections data show. Ahead of the last presidential election, not a single Virginia voter registration was completed electronically. Last month, nearly three-quarters were, for a total of more than 360,000. Just in October ahead of the deadline to register for the Nov. 8 election, the department received 153,000 online voter registration applications — an average of about five per minute. The state's stepped up cross-checking of voter records with other states, driver's license records and national databases of deaths and address changes has also brought more recently arrived Virginians onto voting rolls, Edgardo Cortés, commissioner of the state Department of Elections, said.
Daily Press
Winchester will begin posting City Council meetings on its website beginning Nov. 8, according to a city newsletter. Council work session and regular meetings are two separate meetings, but occur back-to-back on the second and fourth Wednesday every month at Rouss City Hall. Agendas for each can be found on the city’s website. Regular meetings have always been televised. Work sessions were only televised for about a year — from 2012 to 2013. But, council decided in September to begin airing the work sessions again. Multiple councilors said at that time that constituents often tell them they’ve watched the regular meetings on television, but didn’t see much worth watching. That is because regular meetings often serve as a formality, where decisions are solidified after issues have been discussed in closed meetings and work sessions. According to the newsletter, the meetings will now also be streamed live on the city’s website. “After the meeting, the videos will be made available on the portal for playback,” the newsletter states.
Winchester Star
National Stories
The 911 call began with about six seconds of Arabic, and then Omar Mateen switched to English: “I want to let you know, I’m in Orlando, and I did the shooting.” The words, among the first from four recordings that the City of Orlando released on Monday, were spoken on June 12 as Mr. Mateen laid siege to the Pulse nightclub here. And in an array of tones — even and calm at first, then at turns impassioned, incredulous and threatening — Mr. Mateen used his conversations with a dispatcher and a police negotiator to claim that the attack was the work of the Islamic State and to warn, deceptively, of nearby bombs. Although the city published transcripts of the conversations in September, Monday was the first time that the public heard Mr. Mateen as he talked with the authorities amid his assault on the gay nightclub. Forty-nine people, as well as Mr. Mateen, were killed.
New York Times
There were 5,680 invention secrecy orders in effect at the end of Fiscal Year 2016. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office reported that 121 new secrecy orders were issued in 2016, but also that 20 existing orders were rescinded, for a net increase of 101 over the year before. The latest figures were released under the Freedom of Information Act.
Secrecy News
The Hartford region's water-and-sewer agency has invoked a little-used federal Department of Homeland Security anti-terrorism restriction to block citizens' access to what once was public information about its water-supply system. Critics are blasting the legal maneuver by the Metropolitan District, known as the MDC, to have its water supply plan designated as "protected critical infrastructure information" by the homeland security department — under a post-9/11 program designed to prevent damage to public facilities by terrorists. The critics call it an "end-run" to evade the state Freedom of Information Act by lumping non-sensitive information, such as simple supply water-capacity statistics, in with technical information about system controls that might be useful to wrongdoers.
Hartford Courant
Flexing its enforcement muscle in court for the first time, the Office of Open Government has filed suit against the Mayor’s Advisory Commission on Caribbean Community Affairs. D.C. law gives the independent Office power to go to court to enforce the D.C. Open Meetings Act. According to the lawsuit filed in D.C. Superior Court, the Commission failed to post agendas or minutes of 11 meetings this year as the law requires. The lawsuit also says the Commission continued to meet without following the legal requirements despite repeated communications and offers of help.
DC Open Government Coalition
The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has revealed that a worker took over 10,000 activity and staff records with him sometime in November 2015, shortly before he retired. The unnamed worker copied a “large number” of files to two thumb drives and, when asked about the data, couldn’t find the drives to give them back.
Engadget
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