Transparency News 9/6/17

Wednesday, September 6, 2017



State and Local Stories

Hadar Harris, a human rights attorney and non-profit leader with a passion for working with and on behalf of students, will become the next executive director of the Student Press Law Center, effective Sept. 6, 2017. Harris succeeds Frank D. LoMonte, who served the SPLC with distinction for nine years and is now head of the Joseph L. Brechner Center for Freedom of Information at the University of Florida, Gainesville. (LoMonte also served on the VCOG Board of Directors.)
Student Press Law Center

Virginia’s judicial review commission must comply with a federal subpoena and provide documents to U.S. Attorneys prosecuting the case against Judge Kurt Pomrenke, a judge ordered Tuesday. U.S. District Judge James P. Jones denied a motion by the Virginia Judicial Inquiry and Review Commission for a stay and rejected the commission’s effort to overturn an Aug. 31 decision by Magistrate Judge Pamela Meade Sargent regarding those documents. Last week, Sargent rejected motions to quash the subpoenas and directed the commission to provide all documents submitted by Pomrenke to determine what, if any, evidence from his wife’s 2016 trial was included. Prosecutors allege that would violate a 2015 court order about not sharing that evidence.
Herald Courier

The meeting was relatively subdued this time, but constituents and activists continued on Tuesday night to excoriate the Charlottesville City Council and call for the resignation of Mayor Mike Signer. The council was scheduled to vote on removing the city’s statue of Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, more than six months after voting to remove the statue of another Confederate general, Robert E. Lee. Most of Tuesday’s speakers, however, focused on city officials, particularly Signer and Councilor Kathy Galvin.
Daily Progress

Former U.S. Attorney Tim Heaphy on Tuesday announced the launch of a website and telephone tip line for anyone with information related to the ongoing independent review of the city of Charlottesville.  The phone number is 1-877-4-HUNTON, and the website is charlottesvilleindependentreview.com.
Daily Progress

Is that the sound of democracy in the 21st Century? Loudoun software engineer Brian Davison thinks so, and he’s filed a number of lawsuits to get at social media records of elected officials. “We’re only going to get compliance with FOIA and the records laws when people enforce their rights. And unfortunately in too many parts of Virginia that’s not happening.”
WVTF



National Stories
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The California Supreme Court decided Thursday that data from millions of vehicle license plate images collected by the Los Angeles police and sheriff's departments are not confidential investigative records that can be kept from public disclosure. The unanimous opinion came as civil liberties groups raise concerns about the increasing use of police cameras mounted on cruisers or street poles to take photographs of passing vehicles. The devices use software to almost instantly compare the plates with vehicles linked to crimes and the information can be stored for years. The Supreme Court stopped short of ordering the agencies to release the raw data, saying that doing so would violate the privacy of motorists whose licenses were captured. But the justices said there may be other ways to make the information publicly available by redacting some of the information or replacing each license plate number with a random unique identifier.
Governing

In the past few years, some scientists have complained that FOIA has been weaponized by activists and special interest groups to “bully” and “harass” researchers involved in climate science, animal experiments, and other controversial work. But when it comes to grant proposals — in which scientists detail their scientific plans, so they can win government funding — the most common requesters are not bullying political activists, but individuals at academic institutions looking to get an upper hand, a BuzzFeed News analysis has found. Through our own FOIA requests, BuzzFeed News obtained logs of all the FOIA requests received by two major science agencies. (Story contains references to George Mason University)
BuzzFeed News

There is no federal statute that gives reporters the right to protect the confidentiality of sources. But for many years, federal judges were willing to find in the Constitution and prior judicial decisions just such a right. They never saw it as an absolute, but they did require prosecutors to prove a need for the reporter’s testimony or records. In the past decade, the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction. Some courts have questioned whether those earlier decisions were right. Witness the long-running legal battle between the former Times reporter James Risen and prosecutors in a case involving a former C.I.A. officer, Jeffrey Sterling. Mr. Sterling was prosecuted and ultimately convicted of leaking classified information, but the case may best be remembered for Mr. Risen’s principled refusal to reveal whether Mr. Sterling (or anyone else for that matter) had been his source.
New York Times

In 1972, you may have said John Lennon was a Dreamer. He wanted to remain in the U.S. after he overstayed his visa, despite a deportation order from the U.S. government. “I like to be here because this is where the music came from,” Lennon said, explaining his desire to remain in the U.S., according to NPR. “This is what influenced my whole life and got me where I am today.” Lennon was able to get a short extension of his visa, but his application for a green card was denied. His attorney at the time, Leon Wildes, knew that it would be difficult to keep the former Beatles star in the country because he had been convicted of marijuana possession, according to Vice News. Federal law, Wildes knew, allowed immigration officials to exercise discretion in their jobs—prioritizing some deportations over others that were deemed less important. But Wildes couldn’t prove such a program actually existed until he filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, and a box of documents arrived at his office proving him right.
Miami Herald

The General Services Administration’s 18F digital services team has begun work to build a modern, centralized “portal” for Freedom of Information Act requests. The FOIA Improvement Act of 2016 directs the Department of Justice to create a “consolidated online request portal that allows a member of the public to submit a request for records under subsection (a) to any agency from a single website.” DOJ, which received $1.3 million to fund the project, hired the agile-based 18F team to develop the site. So far, 18F has done research by way of user interviews to develop recommendations for the Justice Department that will eventually inform the build of a minimum viable product, 18F members explain in a GitHub post.
FedScoop

The Michigan Court of Appeals will hear arguments in MLive's lawsuit against Grand Rapids for its refusal to release recorded phone calls of police investigating the wrong-way crash of a former Kent County prosecutor. MLive and The Grand Rapids Press filed a lawsuit in Kent County Circuit Court seeking recordings of five calls on a phone line designated non-recorded that documented conversations between Lt. Matthew Janiskee, in the watch commander's office, and officers at the scene of the crash. Janiskee, who has filed his own legal action against the city, alleging illegal wiretapping, has been fired.
MLive

An Ohio sheriff's office plans to release records and body camera footage after a deputy shot a photographer for a small news organization when he apparently mistook his camera for a weapon. The Clark County sheriff's office has put deputy Jake Shaw on administrative leave and says he will attend a "critical incident debriefing." The office says it will release records Wednesday morning.
McClatchy