Transparency News 10/20/14
State and Local Stories
The Records Subcommittee and Meetings Subcommittee of the FOIA Council will meet on Wednesday, November 5, 2014. The Records Subcommittee will meet at 10:00 AM. The Meetings Subcommittee will meet at 1:30 PM. Both subcommittee meetings will be held in the Speaker's Conference Room, Sixth Floor, General Assembly Building.
While revelations from Edward Snowden about the National Security Agency’s massive database of phone records have sparked a national debate about its constitutionality, another secretive database has gone largely unnoticed and without scrutiny. The database, which affects unknown numbers of people, contains phone records that at least five police agencies in southeast Virginia have been collecting since 2012 and sharing with one another with little oversight. Some of the data appears to have been obtained by police from telecoms using only a subpoena, rather than a court order or probable-cause warrant. Other information in the database comes from mobile phones seized from suspects during an arrest. The five cities participating in the program, known as the Hampton Roads Telephone Analysis Sharing Network, are Hampton, Newport News, Norfolk, Chesapeake and Suffolk, according to the memorandum of understanding that established the database. The effort is being led in part by the Peninsula Narcotics Enforcement Task Force, which is responsible for a “telephone analysis room” in the city of Hampton, where the database is maintained.
Wired
The Richmond School Board instructed its attorney to seek clarification from the state Attorney General’s Office about an investigation of Tichi Pinkney Eppes, who admitted to breaching confidential student information. “The attorney is going to be asking the attorney general to get clarity before knowing who else to go to if there’s more to be investigated,” said School Board Chairman Donald Coleman of the 7th District. Virginia state code requires that any breach of personal information reasonably believed to be “accessed or acquired” by unauthorized people must be reported to the attorney general. Eppes apologized for her actions Oct. 7 but stressed that she did not act with “willful malice.”
Times-Dispatch
Embattled Charlottesville Voter Registrar Sheri Iachetta has had three city credit cards revoked since 2008, according to emails obtained Friday through an open-records request. She provided required receipts for fewer than 40 percent of 155 credit card charges cited in 2008 by finance officials as “just a few examples” of her failing to follow city policy. “It was a lot,” Charlottesville Finance Director Bernard Wray said. “She was losing so many receipts we had to start keeping track of them.” Records for the purchases never were produced in the majority of cases, Wray said, and he wasn’t sure whether Iachetta reimbursed the city for the undocumented items. Hers were the only cases of a city credit card being revoked that Wray said he could recall in more than eight years on the job.
Daily Progress
Special memories and stories of the Dan River Region are now being collected and shared at a new website: www.historyunited.org. The new interactive webpage was launched by History United, a community coalition devoted to collecting stories of the Dan River Region. The organization wants the community to share life memories of Danville, Pittsylvania County and Caswell County, North Carolina, under a “History Journal” page. History United recently partnered with the national oral history group StoryCorps to collect 21 interviews of Dan River Region residents, according to a news release. Those interviews will be featured on the new site along with other oral histories.
Register & Bee
Military buffs, politics wonks and those just looking to escape to the city are invited to the estate auction of Black Walnut Plantation this weekend, a site with roots in American history, Hollywood and Halifax County. The plantation’s late owner, Tucker Carrington Watkins IV, filled the home with all sorts of books, buttons and antiques, which are going up for auction beginning Friday. The more than 1,000 items set for auction leave little doubt about Watkins‘ fondness for politics.Among the artifacts up for grabs are campaign buttons for presidential candidates ranging from Benjamin Harrison to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower to John F. Kennedy as well as Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Ross Perot. The collection also includes memorabilia from gubernatorial races, congressional campaigns and state delegate battles.
Washington Times
National Stories
The identity of a public official who submitted a public comment letter to the Charleston District U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been concealed from public view, because otherwise it “would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” That’s according to the federal agency, which released a handful of documents in response to a Freedom of Information Act request for materials generated from the public meeting on Hardeeville’s RiverPort development. Among the records was the unnamed official’s handwritten letter. The meeting was held Aug. 19 at Hardeeville City Hall as a way for the public to learn about the development’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement, and to offer input. The public official’s letter, which is written on one of the Corps’ comment forms, shows the writer checked the “public official” box. But all identifying information, including the official’s position and the space to write his or her name, were blacked out by the Corps’ Office of Counsel.Savannah Now
A family is suing the Marine Corps and other Defense Department agencies, alleging a coordinated, illegal effort to suppress details about the insider attack that claimed the lives of their son and two other Marines in Afghanistan. The lawsuit was filed in federal court Wednesday by the family of Lance Cpl. Greg Buckley Jr. It seeks the release of investigative materials and autopsy results connected to the 2012 murders, which were carried out by an Afghan teenager at a base in the Garmser district of Afghanistan's Helmand province. The complaint also accuses the Marine Corps of callously and incorrectly directing Buckley's family to seek specifics about the attack via the federal Freedom of Information Act, only to ignore their request once it was submitted. It names the Marine Corps, departing commandant Gen. Jim Amos, the Defense Department, Navy Department and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
USA Today
Editorials/Columns
Daily Press
Universities across Virginia and around the nation have a long history of mishandling, ignoring or trying to keep quiet large numbers of sexual assault cases. Lawmakers, police and the public are frustrated that universities around the state did not appear to share enough information about the Graham suspect’s history of behavior. Del. David J. Toscano, D-Charlottesville, said these cases may prompt sexual assault task forces and the State Crime Commission to recommend that universities share more of their information about student sexual assaults. “If it rises to a criminal complaint, I am not sure the student has a total right to privacy,” Toscano said of sexual assault cases, especially when police investigate and a student suspect is disciplined or expelled. Sharing information with law enforcement authorities may be particularly useful, he said. “I don’t really understand this idea of secrecy of records,” said John deKoven Bowen, Charlottesville’s police chief for 23 years until he retired in 1994.“If there’s no conviction, you may not want to share it with the press,” but sexual assault case files should be shared with police agencies, he offered.
Bob Gibson, Roanoke Times
