Transparency News 7/10/14
State and Local Stories
The Prince William Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to seek the whereabouts of an estimated 7,000 people county police have turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials since 2008. Supervisorsapproved a motion to file a Freedom of Information request with the federal Department of Homeland Security, and move to a lawsuit if necessary. Chairman Corey Stewart proposed the motion, which passed with a 5-1 vote. John Jenkins, D-Neabsco, cast the dissenting vote and Maureen Caddigan, R-Potomac, and Michael May, R-Occoquan, were absent from the meeting.
Inside NOVA
The Virginia Freedom of Information Act lists more than 100 exemptions, some from the time the law was enacted in 1968 but most coming in recent years. The Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council, a result of a bill by Delegate James LeMunyon, R-Chantilly, is reviewing each one. As council members scrutinized exemptions one by one Tuesday, Robert Tavenner, director of the Virginia Division of Legislative Services, urged members to ask themselves whether the exemption is needed. The goal? “To ensure transparency in government,” said George Whitehurst, leader of one of the two FOIA subcommittees and communications and public relations manager for the Fredericksburg Regional Chamber of Commerce. “… I hope we can simplify and modify it for the 21st century.” Still, while everyone on the FOIA council — members of the media, business and government communities — professes the same goal of transparency, competing interests between government representatives who keep those records, and those in the open government community who want those records, are bound to clash.
Watchdog.org Virginia Bureau
National Stories
Glenn Greenwald, one of the journalists who has worked closely with exiled whistleblower Edward Snowden to reveal the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance programs, says there may be a second leaker providing the NSA’s secrets to the press. Two German media reports co-authored by former WikiLeaks volunteer and current Tor Project employee Jacob Appelbaum are the cause of his suspicion.
U.S. News & World Report
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/07/07/glenn-greenwald-suggests-theres-a-second-nsa-leaker
Dozens of leading U.S. press organizations are urging the Obama administration to live up to its transparency promises and reverse a trend of increased secrecy at federal agencies. Thirty-eight national press organizations and transparency groups—including the Society for Professional Journalists, Investigative Reporters and Editors, and the Poynter Institute—called on the Obama administration to end “politically driven suppression of news and information about federal agencies,” in a letter to the White House released Tuesday. “Over the past two decades, public agencies have increasingly prohibited staff from communicating with journalists unless they go through public affairs offices or through political appointees,” the letter reads. “This trend has been especially pronounced in the federal government. We consider these restrictions a form of censorship—an attempt to control what the public is allowed to see and hear.”
Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/07/09/press-groups-call-on-obama-administration-to-end-pervasive-secrecy-practices/?intcmp=latestnews
Former IRS official Lois Lerner said she warned her colleagues to be careful about what they write in emails amid congressional inquiries, according to new emails released by House Oversight Republicans. She also asked whether the IRS’s internal messaging system could be searched, in the same email to an IRS colleague. It was sent April 9, 2013, less than two weeks after the IRS inspector general that unearthed the tea party targeting practice shared a draft report with the agency.
Politico
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/lois-lerner-irs-lawyer-email-108722.html#ixzz3747bM323
CEO for Imaging Advantage Naseer Hashim explained that educating the public on what “big data” actually means could help solve America’s hesitation toward the subject. “I think one of the problems is that most people don’t actually know what big data is or what it means, so I think it’s become more of a popular catch-all phrase to refer to data analytics or data mining,” Hashim said at POLITICO’s “Outside In: Big Data Event” at the W Hotel on Wednesday. “What we see more of than startups making a bunch of money off of government data is the exact opposite,” 1776 co-founder Evan Burfield said. “The startups are starting to generate so much data about the cities than the cities themselves have that where we’re seeing the interesting returns is the cities buying the data so that they can actually figure out what’s happening in their city.”
Plitico
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/tech-leaders-unpack-big-data-label-108717.html#ixzz3747wFvcu
Editorials/Columns
Senators Patrick Leahy of Vermont and John Cornyn of Texas, leaders of the Judiciary Committee, have long shown an admirable commitment to open government, and their recent bill to amend the Freedom of Information Act is winning a ton of praise. Some of its reforms make sense, but, unfortunately, its key provision is a horrible idea. By reducing the protection now given to deliberations within the executive branch, it would have a chilling effect on those discussions.
Cass Sunstein, Bloomberg View
Norfolk citizens deserve the opportunity to vote on whether our School Board should be elected. The current petition drive, which ends next Monday, is the latest effort to put the question on the ballot. The biggest hurdle to making the transition to an elected school board is getting the question on the ballot. Three efforts in the mid-1990s failed, as have a couple since. The barrier is rather high: signatures of 10 percent of registered voters as of beginning of the year. The time for collecting signatures is rather short: The petitions must be submitted 111 days before the election.
Vivian Paige, Virginian-Pilot
Revelations regarding the National Security Agency just keep getting more and more sinister. In collecting data on foreigners who are legally targeted for surveillance, the NSA also collects data on innocent Americans. How much data? Nine times as much as it accumulates on legitimate suspects. The revelations also raise doubt about how much the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board actually knows about the activities of the NSA, which it is supposed to oversee. Last week, the board ruled that the NSA was obeying the law in almost all cases. The Brennan Center for Justice argues that the surveillance is legally “ ‘targeted’ in name only.” If it collects nine times as much data on innocent people as on “targets,” something is seriously wrong.
Daily Progress
Only in Amherst. The challenges among the Board of Supervisors continue and could place them in a situation where they are virtually unable to govern. This time around, board is seeking to remove a member of the School Board without having an acceptable candidate to take his place. Last month the supervisors decided not to reappoint Jones Stanley to a new four-year term on the board. He has served as District 3 representative on the board since 2006 and was chairman during the past year. Teachers and public school backers appreciated his longtime advocacy of the school system, which is what you would expect from any school board member, especially the chairman. But evidently not in Amherst. When the supervisors decided not to reappoint him — on a 3-2 vote — they also rejected Stanley’s challenger for the seat, Edward Olivares. The trio of disgruntled supervisors then voted to re-advertise the vacancy on the School Board and take it up later this summer.
News & Advance
