Transparency News 8/28/15

Friday, August 28, 2015

State and Local Stories


There's no settled convention around the country on whether police officers involved in police shootings should be publicly named. Newport News Police Chief Richard W. Myers talked at recent news conference of "a national discussion going on among police leaders" on whether — and when — to make public the names of officers who shoot in the line of duty. The Newport News Police Department's "historic policy and practice" — similar to many other local agencies — is to withhold the name of the officer being investigated. "Our current policy prohibits the release prior to any criminal charges being filed," Myers said.  A group of pastors he called the "the Concerned Clergy," Myers said, urged him to "be fair and consistent and follow our policy the same in all cases." Another factor, he said, is whether there's any "intelligence on threats to the officers involved." Myers told the Daily Press that there were threats on social media against the officer who shot and killed Kawanza Beaty, though the chief declined to get into specifics.
Daily Press

A Spotsylvania High School parent thinks her First Amendment rights were violated when she was told not to criticize the principal by name at a recent School Board meeting. School Board member Ray Lora interjected as parent Roxanne Genalo claimed during the meeting’s public-comment period Monday that Principal Rusty Davis had “chosen to target me with bullying.” Chairwoman Dawn Shelley then told Genalo she was interested in her concerns, but, “It seems that what you want to share with us are personnel-related items. “With that, I feel that those concerns would be more appropriately addressed to our division superintendent,” Shelley told Genalo, who is president of Spotsylvania High’s athletics booster club and has two children at the school. Shelley asked Genalo to put her concerns in writing and send them to school officials. Genalo replied, “OK, fair enough,” and walked away from the podium. In an unusual action shortly thereafter, the School Board voted to give Genalo another opportunity to state her concerns with the condition that she not discuss specific employees. Lora, whose district includes Spotsylvania High, abstained from voting. Genalo continued her speech, but was cut off again by Lora after complaining that a parent had to send three emails before receiving a response from the principal. Lora was not speaking into the microphone but could be heard telling other members that the remarks were “character assassination.” School Board member Baron Braswell reiterated that Genalo needed to avoid “ad hominem attacks.” “Any mention of an individual’s name would be inappropriate,” he said.
Free Lance-Star

A former Marine involuntarily held for psychiatric evaluation in Virginia after posting threatening anti-government messages on Facebook is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate his lawsuit. Attorneys for Brandon Raub filed the petition Wednesday. In his lawsuit, Raub claimed that a Chesterfield County mental health screener who recommended his detention violated his free-speech rights and the constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure. U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson dismissed the lawsuit, and a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld that ruling.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

The city has declined to authorize additional hiring in the commonwealth’s attorney’s office after Suffolk’s top prosecutor says his office’s workload has increased because of police body cameras. Commonwealth’s Attorney C. Phillips “Phil” Ferguson said watching the videos produced by body cameras adds preparation time to even the most routine cases. “You can’t go in and try a case if you have video involved if you haven’t watched the video,” Ferguson said.
Suffolk News-Herald


National Stories
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Last fall, we wrote about how the FBI had set up a fake AP news story in order to implant malware during an investigation. This came out deep in a document that had been released via a FOIA request by EFF, and first noticed by Chris Soghoian of the ACLU. The documents showed the FBI discussing how to install some malware, called a CIPAV (for Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier) by creating a fake news story. It later came out that the way the FBI used this was an undercover agent pretended to be an AP reporter and sent the suspect -- a 15 year old high school kid... -- a "draft" of the article to review. And when the kid opened it, the malware was deployed.  In response to this, FBI director James Comey defended the practice, saying that it was legal "under Justice Department and FBI guidelines at the time" and, furthermore, that this bit of deception worked. Comey also said that while guidelines had changed, and such impersonation would require "higher-level approvals," it was still something the FBI could do.  The AP has now sued the FBI, along with the Reporters Committee on Freedom of the Press (RCFP) over its failure to reveal any more details about this effort following a FOIA request. For reasons that are beyond me, even though it's the AP filing the lawsuit and the AP writing about the lawsuit, reporter Michael Biesecker apparently doesn't think its readers can handle the actual filing, so they don't include it (this is bad journalism, folks). However, you can read the actual lawsuit here. 
Techdirt

During the 2012 attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, State Department officials in Washington were emailing one another with updates in real time. Embedded in those messages were nuggets of classified information, including an apparent reference to a CIA facility that was a closely guarded secret. When the emails were released last year under the Freedom of Information Act, that and other information found to be classified were censored from public view. Hillary Rodham Clinton is now under fire after revelations that material deemed classified was sent through the unsecure home server she was using as secretary of state for both official and private email, a matter that has become an issue in her front-running campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Records reviewed by The Associated Press make clear that the leakage of secrets onto unsecure email is a State Department problem dating to the George W. Bush administration, if not earlier. It may have accelerated under Clinton as email use became more frequent.
U.S. News & World Report

The Center for Food Safety (CFS) has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for allegedly failing to respond to the group’s requests for records on genetically engineered crops CFS says harm the environment. CFS said the agency has failed to provide timely final responses to at least 29 of its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests or appeals. Of these, CFS said the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has entirely failed to provide a final response to 10 requests and two appeals. 
The Hill

As officials assert the legitimacy of using secretive trade negotiations to decide a wide range of Internet policies, multinational corporations have been more than thrilled to take advantage of this opaque process to get their wish list of policies through the backdoor. And it's easy to observe the effects of this corporate captured process. All it takes is to compare the contents of trade agreements with industry's wish-lists to see the extent of collusion between U.S. trade officials and industry representatives. Even so, when we're confronted by the true nature of this lobbying it's hard not to be appalled. In response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by EFF earlier this year, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has released 124 partially-redacted pages of their email communications with private industry representatives from January 2013 and December 2014 regarding digital policy issues in the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA).
Electronic Frontier Foundation

IF YOU EVER find yourself missing the old-school experience of flipping through a porn mag, head up to the fourth floor of City Hall and grab hold of Frank Fina's binder full of nude women. The state Supreme Court yesterday unsealed hundreds of pages of records connected to the looming criminal trial of state Attorney General Kathleen Kane, including pornographic emails that were sent and received by Fina when he was a state prosecutor. Kane has long contended that the smutty images - collected in a nearly 400-page binder in the Supreme Court's Prothonotary Office - are crucial to understanding why she's in a legal bind.
Philadelphia Inquirer

There's little doubt that government's already substantial investment in information technology is going to continue to grow as public agencies look for ways to streamline processes, engage with citizens and achieve social outcomes. Chief information officers are going to be required to show not only that IT funds are being expended effectively but also that these resources are driving outcomes that government and the public care about. Consider this question: If you were to invest $1 in a parks program and $1 in the IT department, which would provide a greater return? Questions like that are going to take on even more importance with the emergence of new technologies (think about drones and self-driving cars), new platforms (consider Bitcoin and the future of digital currency), and new tools (such as predictive analytics and the emerging field of algorithmic regulation).
Governing