ACLU of Virginia lawyers representing People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) presented arguments today in their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the City of Norfolk. The ACLU of Virginia and PETA argued that, according to Virginia Law, the City must keep and make available to the public text messages of City officials conducting City business.
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National Security Agency officials wrestled for weeks with how to respond to an unprecedented surge in open records requests from members of the public in the wake of the first mass surveillance revelations from Edward Snowden almost a year ago.
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Read More… from Top NSA officials struggled over surge in Foia requests, emails reveal
Mr. Terrell was, until last week, chairman of the Walton County Planning Commission. He abruptly gave up the top job amid criticism over a meeting gone awry and an apparent attempt to evade Florida’s open-government, or sunshine, law.
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A new report out from the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) shows that some progress is being made on its 2009 call for governments to more fully embrace open data. Authors note that state and local governments have, in large part, embraced open data policy and are helping to drive government toward a data driven democracy.
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Bloomington (IN) Mayor Tari Renner wants elected officials, not hired staff, to have more say on disputed requests from the public for city records.
Renner’s call for more oversight stems from the city’s recent denial of a Pantagraph Freedom of Information Act request seeking details about the termination of Bloomington Police Officer Brenton VanHoveln, who allegedly falsified documents. The Pantagraph is asking the public access counselor in the state attorney general's office to review the city’s denial and require it to release the records.
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Freedom of Information requests submitted April 15 to the towns of Ridgeway and Shelby (NY) for public records related to the proposed dissolution of the Village of Medina have yet to be fulfilled even though the deadline to do so has elapsed.
The records request was filed by the Medina Journal-Register, which publishes its last edition on Friday. Both towns acknowledged receiving the detailed request and said they would strive to respond in a timely manner.
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Some LGBT activists are upset with University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock, one of the nation’s foremost law-and-religion scholars. According to the Charlottesville Daily Progress, these activists “believe his writings supporting controversial religious freedom laws are holding back progressive causes such as access to contraceptives and gay marriage.” For instance, Professor Laycock blogged here about Arizona’s SB1062, a bill ultimately vetoed by Gov. Jan Brewer that would have clarified and strengthened the state’s religious freedom laws.
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Read More… from “You don’t start a dialogue with FOIA requests”
Last week, the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) released a trove of some 4,000 documents it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act showing that the movements of the mostly peaceful participants in the Occupy Wall Street protests were subjected to an "enormous spying and monitoring apparatus" that included coordination between the Pentagon, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, local police, private security contractors and corporate interests.
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Read More… from Blog: Newly released FOIA documents show “enormous spying and monitoring apparatus”
Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) has spent nearly $400,000 in taxpayer dollars defending his various drug testing schemes, the American Civil Liberties Union said this week.
The Florida government started making welfare applicants and state workers pee in cups to prove they weren't on drugs in 2011, only to have both programs quickly halted by federal courts on constitutional grounds. In response to a records request from the Florida ACLU, the Scott administration disclosed it has spent $381,654 appealing the unfavorable rulings.
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Mathematician Blaise Pascal famously closed a long letter by apologising that he hadn't had time to make it shorter. Unfortunately, his pithy point about "download time" is regularly attributed to Mark Twain and Henry David Thoreau, probably because the public loves writers more than it loves statisticians. Scientists may make things provable, but writers make them memorable.
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Read More… from Open government: getting beyond impenetrable online data
