Jeffrey Clay, a prominent local government watchdog in southern New Hampshire, was awarded more than $40,000 by a federal judge following a disorderly conduct arrest at an Alton selectmen’s meeting in February 2015.
Clay, 57, of Alton, was arrested during the public input portion of the meeting after asking all of the selectmen to resign because of their “poor decisions.”
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Read More… from New Hampshire watchdog awarded $40K after arrest at a public meeting
Tazewell County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Hal Harper has spent every workday for the last two months dealing with Freedom of Information Act requests from a convicted murderer.
Harper, who started two months ago as one of the department’s Freedom Of Information Act officers, said that Daniel Cleary recently sent a request for 2,500 pages of documents and a DVD of his police interrogations.
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Read More… from FOIA change targets nuisance requests in Illinois
Transparency is coming, whether the government likes it or not. The only question is whether they decide to bring it to the public before whistleblowers do it for them.
That's the underlying message of Laura Poitras' mesmerizing new documentary, Citizenfour about Edward Snowden and the National Security Agency that debuted at the New York Film Festival on Friday night.
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Read More… from The Snowden documentary shows that only government transparency can stop leaks
Sitting in a modestly furnished conference room in the Wallace Building, with a bay window view of the State Capitol behind him, Bill Monroe reflects on the workload he expected in the first year with the state's Public Information Board.
The board was created by the state to handle complaints and violations related to open meetings and open records laws, and Monroe served as its chairman from its inception in 2012, including the first year when it had no funding.
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Read More… from Iowa agency ensures open government, transparency
Interview with Jeff Cohen, director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, and he was the founder of the media watchdog FAIR. He is the co-founder of RootsAction.org. He joins us from Ithaca, New York.
WORONCZUK: So, Jeff, what would you say to those who say that encouraging government employees to blow the whistle outside of official channels is going to disrupt the ability of the government to do this kind of surveillance that it needs to protect American citizens against terrorism?
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Read More… from The Fight for the Freedom of Information: Interview with Jeff Cohen
According to the City of Ann Arbor’s log of FOIA requests submitted between January 2013 and May 2014 519 FOIA requests were submitted to the Ann Arbor City Clerk’s office. Thirty-three of the 519 requests came from The Ann Arbor News and the online news site AnnArborChronicle.com. The A2Indy, launched in October 2013, filed five requests. The Ann Arbor Observer filed no FOIA requests. Fewer than a dozen FOIA requests came from local bloggers. Former Annarbor.com lead blogger Ed Vielmetti is one of those local writers.
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An ethics watchdog group called for the resignation of the state ethics commission director Tuesday, citing her involvement in recent whistleblower payouts.
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Read More… from Advocates call for Georgia ethics chief’s head
From TheLedger.com:
LAKELAND | Joel Chandler's success in taking on public agencies that balk at turning over documents deemed in the public domain has earned the Lakeland man the 2012 Local Hero Award of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
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Read More… from Lakeland (Fl.) public records watchdog Joel Chandler honored
