A Pretty Good Session for Open Government Advocates

From PotomacLocal.com

When they gathered this week, members of the Virginia Professional Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists joked that they should check the underside of their vehicles for wiretaps.

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Things you should have easy access to, but don’t

From Detroit Free Press

About five years ago, finding out whether your new neighbor spent time behind bars for murder, rape, robbery — even writing bad checks — required little more than an Internet connection.

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Editorial: More local compliance on FOI laws needed

From The Journal News

The public’s right to know how government operates — and how it spends taxpayers’ money — supersedes local laws that pledge “confidentiality” and aim to protect the “privacy” of public officials.

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Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Current Freedom of Information Act Lawsuits

From Electronic Frontier Foundation

We reviewed what EFF’s Freedom of Information Act requests revealed in the past year. Today, we’ll take a look at the FOIA lawsuits we filed last year and the information we hope the suits will provide.

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Lawsuit: CIA withholds documents using legal exemption it does not have authority to apply

From truthout.org:

For the past eight years, the CIA has used an exemption under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that "protects intelligence sources and methods" to justify the withholding of certain records from requesters.

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NFOIC’s FOI Friday for March 23, 2012

A few open government and FOIA news items selected from many of interest that we might or might not have drawn attention to earlier. Be sure to check out Sunshine Week 2012 News while you're at it.

Hacking as a Civic Duty

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A request to review Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s records as attorney general is delayed

From Times Union:

Looking for records from Andrew Cuomo's tenure as attorney general? Good luck.

Fifteen months after leaving the Department of Law, Cuomo has sent almost nothing to the State Archives, designated by state law as the final resting place for every attorney general's papers.

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Illinois Central School District spends $400 in FOIA fight with newspaper

From BND.com:

Central School District spent a little over $400 in a failed attempt to refuse a Freedom of Information Act request asking to review the district’s legal invoices.

The district paid its attorney Garrett Hoerner $402.50 for legal services related to the rejection of the FOIA request and later defense of the rejection during an investigation from the Illinois Attorney General’s Office.

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