National Stories
A group of open-government advocates is calling on the Supreme Court to improve public access to the financial disclosure forms justices fill out every year. Instead of releasing the documents in paper form through the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts on a delayed basis, and only on request, the groups say the court should make them immediately available online. Common Cause, which has been urging greater transparency from the court on several fronts in recent years, was joined by these organizations in sending the letter: Alliance for Justice, Association of Research Libraries, The Center for Media and Democracy, Center for Public Integrity, Justice at Stake,OpenTheGovernment.org and the Society of American Archivists.
Blog of LegalTimes
The records of all state-related universities in Pennsylvania may soon be open to public scrutiny, as lawmakers consider imposing more accountability on taxpayer-subsidized universities. Meanwhile, the state Office of Open Records is implementing a court ruling that could provide access to some documents from schools not defined as state agencies. The Commonwealth Court's July 19 decision in Bagwell v. Department of Education means that the public may be able to access some university information in a roundabout way by filing open-records requests with state-government departments that communicate with the universities.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
Wesley College (Del.) published more than a dozen records online that revealed the test scores, grades and evaluations of individual students. Among the information available online were scores earned on content-area exams, grade-point averages and written critiques. The college was not the victim of someone hacking into a password-protected system to find the records. They were posted online by someone at the school in 2011 in a folder that was not password protected. The Dover-based college removed the files from public access online almost immediately after a reporter from The News Journal asked today about the public nature of the records. All the files were discovered this morning by a reporter doing a Google search seeking information about the college.
News Journal
The U.S. government has demanded that major Internet companies divulge users’ stored passwords, according to two industry sources familiar with these orders, which represent an escalation in surveillance techniques that has not previously been disclosed. If the government is able to determine a person’s password, which is typically stored in encrypted form, the credential could be used to log in to an account to peruse confidential correspondence or even impersonate the user.
CNET News
The board overseeing Idaho's health insurance exchange plans a 3-hour, 40-minute meeting behind a downtown Boise law office's closed doors where citizens will be barred Thursday _ nearly twice as long as a public meeting scheduled later that day. When the 2013 Legislature approved the exchange in April, it made clear it wanted open meetings. Lawmakers who wrote the statute creating this online insurance marketplace under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul said "every reasonable effort shall be made to make such meetings televised or streamed."
Idaho State Journal
A Tennessee student convicted of hacking Republican Sarah Palin's email in the 2008 election year has been released early from federal supervision. David Kernell was supposed to be supervised by the U.S. Probation Office until November 2014 after being released from prison in 2011.
Anchorage Daily News
A series of unsealed opinions released today in a high-profile leak case in Washington reveal new information about possible defense strategies and also the scope of documents and information prosecutors will be able to keep secret. Former U.S. Department of State contractor Stephen Jin-Woo Kim is charged with leaking confidential information about North Korea to Fox News reporter James Rosen. Earlier this year, Kim’s attorneys pressed the government to disclose, in discovery, a trove of information. Until Thursday, Kim's motions, along with the government's responses and subsequent court opinions, were sealed.
Blog of LegalTimes
A group of industry lobbyists and privacy rights advocates voiced support Thursday for new voluntary guidelines for mobile apps that should make it easier for consumers to know what personal information is getting sucked from their smartphone or tablet and passed along to marketers.
Virginian-Pilot
In Closing Argument, Prosecutor Casts Soldier as ‘Anarchist’ for Leaking Archives / The prosecution argues that Pfc. Bradley Manning is a traitor, but his lawyers say he is a principled protester who wanted to help society.
New York Times
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