Transparency News 10/27/14 – Virginia Coalition for Open Government

Monday, October 27, 2014

State and Local Stories

Gov. Terry McAuliffe's new ethics advisory panel holds its first meeting today, with one agenda item given fresh urgency by a recent court decision declaring Virginia's congressional district lines unconstitutional. In light of that ruling, the panel has moved up for immediate consideration the concept of nonpartisan redistricting.
Virginian-Pilot

Virginia’s busiest elections office, which will compile vote tallies for hundreds of thousands of Fairfax County ballots Nov. 4, has struggled for years with infighting and high staff turnover, according to interviews, e-mails and documents obtained by The Washington Post. The discord is casting a pall over the office tasked with protecting the integrity of elections in Virginia’s most populous jurisdiction, prompting calls for improvement from top county officials. Some critics say the turmoil adds to the challenge of training precinct workers to use new, more customer-friendly voting machines and implement a statewide voter ID law on Election Day.
Washington Post

A former legal client of Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr. pleaded guilty this week totrying to blackmail the lawmaker over what an assistant U.S. attorney called “embarrassing e-mails and text messages.” According to documents filed this week in federal court, Norment sent the messages to three women, including a friend of Christopher Burruss, who is a former legal client of Norment’s. Burruss threatened to release the messages to the public if Norment didn’t reimburse him for about $20,000 in legal fees and admit that he mishandled Burruss’s legal defense.
Washington Post

The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia has sent a Freedom of Information Act request to Hampton, Newport News, Suffolk, Chesapeake and Norfolk for information on the Hampton Roads Telephone Analysis Share Network, a database formed two years ago to help police scour personal telephone data for potential criminal activity. The ACLU was contacted by the Center for Investigative Reporting earlier this month about the database. CIR, The Virginian-Pilot and other media outlets have since reported about it.
Virginian-Pilot

National Stories

In Judicial Watch’s FOIA dispute with the Department of Justice over Fast and Furious documents, there are some curious developments. The Department of Justice produced a so-called Vaughn index this week, which detailed the documents that had been withheld as exempt from disclosure under FOIA and explained, in brief detail, the basis for the withholding. This is standard operating procedure in FOIA litigation. What is hardly standard is that DOJ has withheld as exempt from disclosure maybe a dozen or so e-mails sent by Holder to his wife’s e-mail address. These documents are designated as exempt from disclosure under the “deliberative process” privilege, which protects the internal pre-decisional communications of the government. Thus, for instance, before an agency regulation is adopted, the privilege protects from disclosure all the internal communications of agency staff about the content of the regulation.
National Review

A coalition of 50 groups urging more government transparency called on President Obama to publicly support legislation that would reform the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) process. The conglomerate — including government watchdogs, civil liberties groups and media advocacy groups — wants a commitment that a number of reforms will remain in place after the president leaves office.
The Hill

Emergency calls made by passengers and passing motorists capture the chaos, fear and confusion in the aftermath of a tour bus crash in Delaware that left three people dead. Audio recordings of several 911 calls obtained by The Associated Press Thursday under the Freedom of Information Act also indicate that 911 operators struggled to learn exactly where the Sept. 21 crash occurred because passengers didn't know where they were. "I have no idea where we are," a distraught female passenger with a thick accent told a 911 operator. "Between Washington and Philadelphia. Somewhere between Washington and Philadelphia." "Can you find us?" the woman asks in a plaintive plea for help.
Roanoke Times

The personal information of almost 100,000 people seeking their high school transcripts wasrecently exposed on a Web site that helps students obtain their records. The site,NeedMyTranscript.com, facilitates requests from all 50 states and covers more than 18,000 high schools around the country, according to its Web site and company chief executive officer. The data included names, addresses, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, mothers' maiden names and the last four digits of the users' Social Security numbers. Although there is no evidence the data were stolen, privacy advocates say the availability of such basic personal information heightens the risk of identity theft.
Washington Post

Editorials/Columns

Sometimes the First Amendment guarantees access to public records (generally limited to court records). Often Freedom of Information Acts and Public Records Acts are seen as fulfilling broader First Amendment values, by facilitating speech about how the government operates. But in Thursday’s Roe v. Anderson (W.D. Wash. Oct. 23, 2014), a federal district judge relied on the First Amendment to block a state public records request.
Eugene Volokh, Washington Post

We are only weeks away from one of the most important votes of our lifetime. We refer not to the choice for U.S. Senate between Mark Warner and Ed Gillespie; you’ll only have to live with those results for six years. We’re talking about the decision by the Federal Communications Commission — likely in November or December — about whether to continue to classify the Internet as an “information service” or reclassify it as a “common carrier.” Or, to put it in layman’s terms, is the Internet something that should be regulated like a utility, such as, oh, say, the phone company? Or, to put it in even clearer terms, should you have to pay more to stream “House of Cards” from Netflix? Almost everyone in the United States thinks the Internet should be free. (Free as in freedom, not necessarily free as in the access fee to get there.) But what is free? If Comcast, for instance, wants to charge some customers more to deliver their data over an Internet “fast lane,” leaving others in a “slow lane” on the information superhighway, is that freedom? Freedom from regulation, certainly. But if the government mandates that Internet service providers treat all data equally, is that freedom? Freedom from the marketplace, for sure, but not necessarily freedom from government regulators.
Daily Progress