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National Stories
The state Court of Appeals says the Michigan Catastrophic Claims Association, made up of auto insurers, is exempt from the state’s Freedom of Information Act, overturning a lower court ruling granting access to its records. The Coalition Protecting Auto No-Fault filed a FOIA request with the association in 2011, seeking information about all open and closed claims serviced by the MCCA. In 2012, the coalition sued in Ingham County Circuit Court to force release of the records, and was later joined by other plaintiffs whose requests for records were rejected, including the Brain Injury Association of Michigan.
Detroit Free Press
Nearly half of the financial reports federal appellate judges filed last year included redacted information, according to a review of the annual disclosures. Of the 257 reports provided to The National Law Journal by the judiciary late last year and early this year, 112 included redactions. Several judges shielded the sources of thousands of dollars in outside income, travel reimbursements and gifts, the reports show. The disclosures highlight potential financial conflicts between judges and the lawyers and litigants who come before them. Judges can ask to black out information only for security reasons — if, for instance, they can show that revealing information about places they visit or assets they own would pose a physical or financial threat to themselves or family members. The latest reports available covered information for 2012.
National Law Journal
The Illinois Supreme Court has declared that state's attorneys are government officials subject to state public-records law. The unanimous ruling released Thursday forces county prosecutors to release public records under the Freedom of Information Act. The law is intended to improve government transparency. The case began when a reporter asked for emails between employees in the Kendall County State's Attorney's office. The office denied the request, claiming it was part of the judicial branch of government, which is exempt from the act.
Journal Gazette & Times-Courier
House lawmakers easily passed an NSA surveillance reform bill Thursday but without the support of some civil liberties groups and tech coalitions who called it watered down. Even chief sponsors lamented that the end result was less than perfect. The 303-121 vote came almost a year after Edward Snowden first thrust the National Security Agency’s activity into the national spotlight. Proponents billed the measure, which is chiefly designed to ban the government from obtaining phone records in bulk, as a historic opportunity to curb the government’s surveillance authority. Still, many of them said they had hoped for a stronger measure.
Politico
A state judge in Pennsylvania has ruled that the names, property addresses, billing addresses and other information about delinquent sewer customers is subject to the state’s Right-to-Know Law. Last August, a Patriot-News reporter requested the information, which also includes the amount owed to the sewer department and how many days past due the customer is on paying its bill. At the time of the request, the PA Media Group, which owns The Patriot-News, said residents had an interest in seeing how billing was handled as sewer services costs rise. Costs had recently increased between 37 and 62 percent for 1,800 customers in the region. The borough to which the newspaper submitted the request indicated it was concerned about violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and Pennsylvania Fair Credit Extension Uniformity Act if it released the information.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
The North Carolina Senate on Thursday voted to make it a crime to disclose the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, even as big U.S. oil companies elsewhere consider releasing more information about the fluids to address public concerns about the environment. The legislation, proposed by three Republican state senators and passed by a vote of 35-12, aims to protect trade secrets about fluids used to extract oil or gas from wells using fracking, which blasts sand, water and chemicals deep beneath the earth's surface. Environmentalists concerned about groundwater contamination and health risks want more information made public.
Reuters
Minnesota lawmakers will no longer be issued a “Get Out of Jail Free” card by Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, who said Wednesday that there is no law on the books that requires him to hand out the controversial cards that have long been a prized perk. His decision brings an end to the wallet-sized cards that carry a simple but powerful statement of privilege: Under the Minnesota Constitution, lawmakers “in all cases except treason, felony and breach of the peace, shall be privileged from arrest” while the Legislature is in session.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Documents unsealed Thursday by a federal court in Seattle reveal that late last year, Microsoft successfully challenged an FBI National Security Letter. NSLs allow FBI officials to send requests to Web and telecommunications companies requesting account information, with the assumption that the information is relevant to a national security investigation. The NSL Microsoft received was in regard to one of its enterprise customers and it sought basic subscriber information, Microsoft's general counsel Brad Smith said in a blog post.
CNET News
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