Transparency News 5/20/19

 

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Monday
May 20, 2019

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state & local news stories

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Emails from the sheriff's office obtained under the Freedom of Information Act suggest the sheriff planned to use county facilities and personnel to establish his reelection campaign announcement.

Don't miss the Library of Virginia's lecture next week -- May 21 from 12 to 1 p.m. -- on how the library processes gubernatorial records. The event is free and open to the public.
"Millions of Messages," on the LVA website

Henry County Sheriff Lane Perry’s plan to announce that he would seek a fourth term as the sheriff of Henry County was constructed carefully, communicated purposefully and included public employees, public facilities and even law enforcement agents perhaps on the clock in surrounding jurisdictions. Emails from Perry’s office concerning the press conference, obtained under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act by the Martinsville Bulletin, suggest that Perry planned to use county facilities and personnel to establish his campaign announcement and to hide from area media the reason for the press conference so that it would be covered more widely. "The media will try to start picking to find out," Perry wrote in one email to his captain. "If they know, they start weighing out which story they're working on."
Martinsville Bulletin

Police are investigating a traffic crash involving Strasburg Mayor Rich Orndorff Jr. that occurred Friday evening during the town’s annual Mayfest. Strasburg Police Chief Wayne Sager declined to answer any questions, referring the media to the state police, which are conducting the investigation. Sager also declined a Freedom of Information request for any reports his department would have generated as a result of their response to the crash, citing the ongoing investigation by the state police.
The Northern Virginia Daily

A former CIA officer has been sentenced to 20 years in prison after a jury convicted him of spying for China. The sentence issued Friday in federal court in Alexandria for 62-year-old Kevin Mallory of Leesburg is less than the life sentence sought by prosecutors but more than the 10-year term requested by the defense. A jury convicted Mallory last year under the Espionage Act for providing classified information to Chinese handlers in exchange for $25,000.
The Loudoun Times-Mirror

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stories of national interest

Public records sometimes say the darnedest things. One example: A declassified memo from 1977 shows that the NSA wondered if psychics could nuke cities so that they became lost in time and space (yes, like in the post-apocalyptic anime Akira). Other times, it’s what they don’t say — like when the FBI found it necessary to redact the name of Superman’s alter-ego, Clark Kent. We know about these great tidbits thanks to the work of MuckRock, a nonprofit organization (and GIJN member) that helps journalists, researchers, activists and regular citizens file records requests in the United States. While there few things sweeter than a successful request for government records, making these requests be complicated and time-consuming — not to mention, well, tedious. MuckRock, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been working for the past nine years to make the process a lot more fun.
Global Investigative Journalism Network

Local election officials in the two unnamed Florida counties where Russian agents hacked voter rolls in 2016 are able to publicly disclose whether they had been attacked. But the bureaucrats are clamming up instead. And voters in those counties have no right to know that information, according to the FBI. Nor is the state’s governor or its congressional delegation allowed to tell the public the names of those counties. That’s because the FBI made the governor sign a non-disclosure agreement in order to receive a classified briefing about the hack, along with the members of Congress. Some lawmakers are outraged at what they see as bizarre reasoning from the agency. For now, the information about the two counties is being kept officially secret — even though the identity of one of the hacking “victims,” Washington County’s election office, has leaked out.
Politico
 

 

quote_2.jpg"A declassified memo from 1977 shows that the NSA wondered if psychics could nuke cities so that they became lost in time and space."

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