Part-Time Policy Wonk

From Secrecy News:

Government agencies may redesignate “controlled unclassified information” (CUI) as classified information in order to prevent its disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, according to an agreement signed last week between the United States and the Czech Republic.

The July 8 agreement (pdf) on establishment of a U.S. missile defense radar in the Czech Republic devotes an entire section (Article XII) to “controlled unclassified information,” which is defined as “unclassified information to which access or distribution limitations have been applied in accordance with applicable national laws.”

Posted by Anne at 04:52 PM | Permalink

From the National Journal: (Subscription required)

Ahead of a scheduled House vote today, the White House threatened to veto a bill aimed at forcing the president and federal agencies to improve preservation of e-mail records.

Posted by Anne at 08:54 PM | Permalink

From Slate:

I got bad news from the FBI a few months ago. A file I'd requested under the Freedom of Information Act wasn't going to be available. Ever.

And not for one of the reasons I already knew to expect—that the material was classified, that the file concerned a living person, or that no file existed to begin with. Judging by the FBI's final response letter, there might have been a file on my subject, a long-deceased Mississippi lawyer name John R. Poole. But if there was, it got shredded.

Posted by Anne at 08:19 PM | Permalink

From Secrecy News:

Secrecy News was removed from the distribution list for the U.S. State Department history publication “Foreign Relations of the United States” (FRUS) after we reported on errors in several FRUS volumes on March 24 and 26, 2008.

A spokesman for the State Department Historian’s Office confirmed that officials had ordered the removal of Secrecy News from the FRUS mailing list in response to our critical coverage.

Posted by Anne at 08:12 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

The White House does not have to make public internal documents examining the potential disappearance of e-mails sent during some of the Bush administration's biggest controversies, a U.S. district judge ruled yesterday.

In a 39-page opinion, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said that the White House's Office of Administration is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), even though its top officials had complied with the public records law for more than two decades.

Posted by Anne at 06:46 PM | Permalink

From OMBWatch:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced May 21 that it is eliminating the only program that tracks pesticide use in the United States. The USDA claimed it can no longer afford the program, known as the Agricultural Chemical Usage Reports. Consumers, environmental organizations, scientists, and farmers oppose the move.

The Agricultural Chemical Usage Reports, collected by the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), are the only publicly available data on pesticide use in the country. Since at least 1991, NASS has produced the detailed annual report widely used for scientific, consumer, and business research. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and local governments have also depended on this information in developing chemical risk assessments and pesticide use policies.

The USDA announcement marks the final blow to a program that has been steadily eroded over the last few years.

Posted by Anne at 08:27 PM | Permalink

From Government Executive Magazine:

A bill mandating the creation of a federal contractor misconduct database is one step closer to becoming law, but a lack of support in the Senate has forced Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., its primary sponsor, to limit access only to government officials.

Last month, the House passed a database bill, sponsored by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., with no such restrictions.

A McCaskill aide, speaking on background, confirmed that senators on the Armed Services and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committees -- both in the majority and minority -- would not support the bill if the database were open to the general public. A stand-alone McCaskill bill, mirroring the House legislation, has stalled in Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs panel.

Posted by Anne at 08:38 PM | Permalink

From the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation:

The federal Conservatives have quietly killed an access to information registry used by journalists, experts and the public that users say helped hold the government accountable.

The Coordination of Access to Information Requests System, or CAIRS, is an electronic list of nearly every access to information request filed to federal departments and agencies.

Originally created in 1989, it was used as an internal tool to keep track of requests and co-ordinate the government's response between agencies to potentially sensitive information released.

Now, users mine the database to do statistical studies, fine tune phrasing on new requests and discover obscure documents — often using the information against the government.

Posted by Anne at 08:37 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Times:

Lawyers for Oregon are accusing a legal publisher of breaking the law for posting the state code on its Web site.

Oregon's Legislative Counsel Committee earlier this month issued a cease-and-desist letter to Justia.com, accusing it of copyright infringement for publishing the Oregon Revised Statutes.

Justia publishes laws, regulations and legal decisions where they can be viewed free. The Palo Alto, Calif., company also offers commercial services helping law firms set up Web sites and blogs.

Oregon does not claim a copyright in the "text of the law itself," but rather in "the arrangement and subject-matter compilation" of the law, Legislative Counsel Dexter Johnson said in an April 7 letter to Tim Stanley, chief executive officer of Justia.com. The letter advised Justia.com that it may link to the law on the state's own Web site, or it must pay for a license to publish it.

Posted by Anne at 08:28 PM | Permalink

From the San Diego Union-Tribune:

More than a year ago, a New York financier pleaded guilty to laundering bribe money for former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in a deal that was kept secret for months.

That closed-door bargain triggered a battle between federal prosecutors and public-access advocates that took secrecy to unprecedented heights.

Posted by Anne at 08:25 PM | Permalink

From the Utne Reader:

During George W. Bush’s first and second terms, his administration has slowed the release of essential government information to a trickle, in most cases to avoid unflattering public scrutiny. This has gone largely unnoticed by the general public. After all, with a war going on and a different celebrity getting thrown in the clink every other week, what’s a suppressed report here, some redacted testimony there, a wee bit of executive privilege over there, there, and there?

Dick Cheney’s aversion to the sunlight has made headlines so often that his latest information crackdown is more likely to be fodder for David Letterman than it is to spark outrage. Still, if the average citizen saw a grocery list of all the instances of government suppression over the past seven years, it’s a good guess it would lead to an outcry. Something like: Hey, what the hell happened to the public’s right to know?

Posted by Anne at 05:00 PM | Permalink

From Perrspectives:

What a difference a week makes, especially when it comes to the rollercoaster American economy. No where is the impact of looming recession and the near-meltdown on Wall Street clearer than on the White House web site. Just days ago, the site boasted about President Bush's glorious stewardship of the U.S. economy. Now, the White House's economy web page reflects the mad scramble to ward off the twin crises of the housing market and the financial system.

Posted by Anne at 04:55 PM | Permalink

From ABC News:

ABC News' Jonathan Karl Reports: The Bush Administration apparently does not want a U.S. military study that found no direct connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda to get any attention. This morning, the Pentagon cancelled plans to send out a press release announcing the report's release and will no longer make the report available online.

The report was to be posted on the Joint Forces Command website this afternoon, followed by a background briefing with the authors. No more. The report will be made available only to those who ask for it, and it will be sent via U.S. mail from Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia.

It won't be emailed to reporters and it won't be posted online.

Asked why the report would not be posted online and could not be emailed, the spokesman for Joint Forces Command said: "We're making the report available to anyone who wishes to have it, and we'll send it out via CD in the mail."

Another Pentagon official said initial press reports on the study made it "too politically sensitive."

• Iraqi Perspectives Report Saddam And Terrorism: Emerging Insights From Captured Iraqi Documents Volume 1 (Redacted) January 2007. IDA Paper P-4287. (9 pages, 3.4 Meg PDF)

ABC also has a copy of a longer version of what is apparently the same report here:
• Iraqi Perspectives Project Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents Volume 1 (Redacted) "This volume is a redacted version of Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents, Volume I (IDA Paper P-4151). November 2007 Approved for public release; distribution unlimited. IDA Paper P-4287 Log: H 07-001575 (94 page, 11.7 Megs, PDF)

Posted by Anne at 06:45 PM | Permalink

From OMB Watch:

After significantly delaying the release of a report that identifies alarming toxic health risks for the Great Lakes region, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is now reportedly planning to release a substantially modified document.

Posted by Anne at 08:56 PM | Permalink

From Free Government Information:

Forbes has awarded EconomicIndicators.gov one of its “Best of the Web” awards. As Forbes explains, the government site provides an invaluable service to the public for accessing U.S. economic data:

This site is maintained by the Economics and Statistics Administration and combines data collected by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, like GDP and net imports and exports, and the Census Bureau, like retail sales and durable goods shipments. The site simply links to the relevant department’s Web site. This might not seem like a big deal, but doing it yourself -- say, trying to find retail sales data on the Census Bureau’s site -- is such an exercise in futility that it will convince you why this portal is necessary.

Yet the Bush administration has decided to shut down this site because of “budgetary constraints,” effective March 1.

Posted by Anne at 08:12 PM | Permalink

From Secrecy News:

Public access to the Reimer Digital Library, which is the largest online collection of U.S. Army doctrinal publications, has been blocked by the Army, which last week moved the collection behind a password-protected firewall.

But today the Federation of American Scientists filed a Freedom of Information Act request (pdf) asking the Army to provide a copy of the entire unclassified Library so that it could be posted on the FAS web site.

Posted by Anne at 08:18 PM | Permalink

From the Center for Public Integrity:

For more than seven months, the nation’s top public health agency has blocked the publication of an exhaustive federal study of environmental hazards in the eight Great Lakes states, reportedly because it contains such potentially “alarming information” as evidence of elevated infant mortality and cancer rates.

The 400-plus-page study, Public Health Implications of Hazardous Substances in the Twenty-Six U.S. Great Lakes Areas of Concern, was undertaken by a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the request of the International Joint Commission, an independent bilateral organization that advises the U.S. and Canadian governments on the use and quality of boundary waters between the two countries. The study was originally scheduled for release in July 2007 by the IJC and the CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR).

Download excerpts from the report.

Posted by Anne at 08:23 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

The White House possesses no archived e-mail messages for many of its component offices, including the Executive Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President, for hundreds of days between 2003 and 2005, according to the summary of an internal White House study that was disclosed yesterday by a congressional Democrat.

The 2005 study -- whose credibility the White House attacked this week -- identified 473 separate days in which no electronic messages were stored for one or more White House offices, said House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.).

Posted by Anne at 05:54 PM | Permalink

From The News Tribune:

. . . With the OK of a little-noticed but influential government committee known as the Civil Applications Committee, those reconnaissance photos were eventually released to scientists.

The committee, under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Geological Survey, reviews civilian requests for classified reconnaissance information and makes a recommendation to the intelligence community, which has the final say on what is declassified.

The spy data can be helpful to scientists studying volcanoes, forest fires, earthquakes and landslides, climate change, hurricanes, flooding and pollution.

Now the Bush administration plans to abolish the committee and create an office within the Department of Homeland Security to review such requests, along with those from law enforcement agencies. Scientists are concerned their requests could be sidetracked or delayed as security and law enforcement needs take precedence.

Posted by Anne at 07:36 PM | Permalink

From Secrecy News:

Several defense intelligence agencies will withhold unclassified information about their contracts from a new public database of government spending.

The new database at USAspending.gov is intended to provide increased transparency regarding most government contracts.

But when it comes to intelligence spending, there will actually be a net loss of public information because categories of intelligence contracting data that were previously disclosed will now be withheld.

Posted by Anne at 08:21 PM | Permalink

From Stateline.org:

The 2001 terrorist attacks led every state but South Dakota to restrict access to information deemed critical to homeland security — from architectural blueprints to emergency evacuation routes, according to a comprehensive, state-by-state study of post-9/11 changes to open-government laws.

Wary of terrorists, state lawmakers closed government meetings previously open to the public, denied residents access to disaster-response plans and concealed documents on mass-transit systems, energy companies and research laboratories, according to the findings.

Posted by Anne at 08:45 PM | Permalink

From Secrecy News:

The Central Intelligence Agency anticipates declining productivity in its declassification program, according to a newly disclosed declassification plan (pdf).

Between 1995 and 2006, CIA reviewed nearly 97 million pages of 25 year old documents and released 30 million pages, the Agency reported. But that level of activity is unlikely to be sustained.

Posted by Anne at 08:38 PM | Permalink

From Talking Points Memo:

Another year has almost passed under the Bush Administration, and so it's time to review how much less we know.

Last year, we launched the insanely ambitious project of recording every significant instance of this administration stifling government information. As we said then, "they've discontinued annual reports, classified normally public data, de-funded studies, quieted underlings, and generally done whatever was necessary to keep bad information under wraps." To be sure, the list will continue to grow through January, 2008.

Posted by Anne at 08:40 PM | Permalink

From Kable's Government Computing:

Land Registry has pulled potentially sensitive documents from its online service

As from midnight on 5 November 2007, online access to documents such as mortgage deeds and leases will be removed. Members of the public wishing to inspect or have copies of any such documents can do so by applying in writing to Land Registry.

The move followed a report in The Daily Mail that criminal gangs have stolen £12m over the past two years by exploiting loopholes in the website. They gained access to documents such as title deeds to make it possible to sell properties they did not own.

Posted by Anne at 07:32 PM | Permalink

From The Intelligencer / Wheeling News-Register:

West Virginia’s Legislature has carved out nearly 100 exceptions to the state’s public records and open meetings laws since crafting them three decades ago, a review by The Associated Press has found.

From the results of regulatory probes to the location of endangered wild animals and rare plants, lawmakers have steadily added limits to the public’s right to know. Such additions are necessary, legislators say. Open records advocates disagree.

Posted by Anne at 08:02 PM | Permalink

From Secrecy News:

Although summary accounts of several National Intelligence Estimates have recently been declassified and published, this should not become standard practice, the Director of National Intelligence declared last week.

"It is the policy of the Director of National Intelligence that KJs [the Key Judgments from National Intelligence Estimates] should not be declassified," DNI J. Michael McConnell wrote.

See "Guidance on Declassification of National Intelligence Estimate Key Judgments," memo to the Intelligence Community Workforce, October 24, 2007.

Also, from the International Herald Tribune: US Intelligence officials clamping down on release of intelligence estimates

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell has reversed the recent practice of declassifying and releasing summaries of national intelligence estimates, a top U.S. intelligence official said Friday.

Knowing their words may be scrutinized outside the U.S. government chills analysts' willingness to provide unvarnished opinions and information, said David Shedd, a deputy to McConnell.

Posted by Anne at 08:31 PM | Permalink

From The Hill:

One Senate GOP leader, with the apparent support of fellow senior Republicans, said Thursday that his party would continue to insist on a vote on forcing groups that file ethics complaints to disclose their donors before the Senate approves electronic campaign-finance filing.

National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) Chairman John Ensign (Nev.) frustrated Democrats by stepping forward to object to the electronic filing plan after a series of anonymous objections. But Ensign maintained his denial of holding up the campaign finance bill, vowing he would support it if the GOP amendment on ethics complaints were allowed a vote.

Posted by Anne at 08:04 PM | Permalink

From the Sunlight Foundation:

It's interesting to watch what happens in Congress when "because that's the way we've always done it" no longer becomes an option. For years, Senators have put secret holds on bills they wanted to block. These anonymous objections have been used by both parties to bring to a screeching halt legislation that has the support of a majority of the Members. Sunlight has long-championed putting that tired tradition to rest. A provision we lobbied for in the recently-enacted Honest Leadership and Open Government Act does that, more or less, by requiring Senators to come clean about their holds after five days. Ironically, we've seen the results of this provision on two important transparency related measures.

Posted by Anne at 08:03 PM | Permalink

From the Seattle Times:

Senate officials have confirmed that a Republican senator is secretly blocking a bill that would reverse President Bush's 2001 executive order allowing former presidents to seal their records indefinitely. . .

. . . The House approved a bill to overturn the Bush order in March, on a 333-93 vote, far more than the two-thirds needed to override a veto. The Senate Government Affairs Committee, chaired by Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., agreed in June to a vote, and backers expected a floor vote before the August recess.

Suspicion for the hold initially focused on three senators: Ted Stevens of Alaska, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and George Voinovich of Ohio.

Aides to Stevens and Voinovich said Wednesday that their bosses are not blocking the bill. Coburn aides didn't respond.

Posted by Anne at 07:39 PM | Permalink

From ALA's District Dispatch:

This past summer, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) moved its reading room to their new facility. This was after there was some concern that it would be closed. The reading room contains many valuable resources used by public safety groups, journalists, lawyers, and corporations, among others.

In earlier meetings with NHTSA, ALA learned that several important databases containing historical information have been removed from the Reading Room since last year and may be permanently removed from public access. We have recently learned that these resources remain missing and that the new reading room presents additional concerns-- it is very difficult to access for several logistical reasons; the microfiche machine is inoperable; and groups still fear the reading room could still be shut down.

Please see the attached letter from Safety Research & Strategies, Inc. for details on concerns with the new reading room.

Posted by Anne at 07:38 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

The Bush administration argued in court papers this week that the White House Office of Administration is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act as part of its effort to fend off a civil lawsuit seeking the release of internal documents about a large number of e-mails missing from White House servers.

The claim, made in a motion filed Tuesday by the Justice Department, is at odds with a depiction of the office on the White House's own Web site. As of yesterday, the site listed the Office of Administration as one of six presidential entities subject to the open-records law, which is commonly known by its abbreviation, FOIA.

Posted by Anne at 08:43 PM | Permalink

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

According to documents released to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) by the Army and Defense Department, soldier journalists post far less information that could harm military operations than official .mil websites do. These documents call into question the need for new restrictions on soldiers' online speech, which some critics say will cause military bloggers to cut back on their posts or shut down their sites altogether.

Posted by Anne at 08:02 PM | Permalink

There is a kind of beautiful symmetry about his.

From the Dallas Morning News:

SMU rejected a proposal Wednesday that would have allowed a dozen university employees and a handful of architects with knowledge about the George W. Bush Presidential Library to be quizzed confidentially about the university's plans.

Meanwhile, the university's attorney confirmed that a formal announcement about the library could come as soon as mid-September.

Ousted condo owner Gary Vodicka offered the proposal as part his long-running effort to get details about Southern Methodist University's bid for the project. SMU has declined to discuss its plans, calling the information a trade secret that could be used by the Bush library competitors.

Posted by Anne at 07:44 PM | Permalink

From Publishers Weekly:

Federal judge Barbara Jones has ruled in favor of the CIA in its attempt to prohibit former agent Valerie Plame Wilson from disclosing the dates she worked for the agency in her upcoming book. Wilson, along with publisher Simon & Schuster, filed a lawsuit in late May in New York seeking to stop the CIA from interfering with publication of her book, Fair Game.

In their suit, Wilson and S&S argued that since the dates of Wilson’s CIA service have been made public, she should be able to write about it in her memoir. Judge Jones ruled that while the dates are in the public record, they have never been declassified. She also said a letter from the CIA, which neither S&S nor Wilson saw, convinced her there were national security reasons for keeping her from including the dates.

Posted by Anne at 08:20 PM | Permalink

From Secrecy News:

One day after President Bush signed into law a bill that requires public disclosure of the national intelligence budget, the House of Representatives adopted an amendment to prevent that requirement from taking effect. . .

. . . Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) offered an amendment to the Defense Appropriations Act on August 4 that would prohibit budget disclosure. Without any debate, Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) announced that the amendment was accepted.

The Issa amendment will have to be addressed in a House-Senate conference before it effectively repeals the new disclosure requirement.

Posted by Anne at 08:10 PM | Permalink

From the L.A. Times:

As the Bush administration struggles to convince lawmakers that its Iraq war strategy is working, it has stopped reporting to Congress a key quality-of-life indicator in Baghdad: how long the power stays on.

Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week that Baghdad residents could count on only "an hour or two a day" of electricity. That's down from an average of five to six hours a day earlier this year.

But that piece of data has not been sent to lawmakers for months because the State Department, which prepares a weekly "status report" for Congress on conditions in Iraq, stopped estimating in May how many hours of electricity Baghdad residents typically receive each day.

Instead, the department now reports on the electricity generated nationwide, a measurement that does not indicate how much power Iraqis in Baghdad or elsewhere actually receive.

Posted by Anne at 08:46 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

In response to a Web site that outs criminal informants and undercover agents, some U.S. judges are withholding certain court documents from the Internet.

Federal judges in eastern Pennsylvania and southern Florida are keeping plea and sentencing memos out of online case files because of concerns that the information is being posted on a Web site called WhosARat.com.

The documents still will be available in person at the federal courthouse.

Posted by Anne at 08:31 PM | Permalink

OpenTheGovernment.org Press Release:

The United States has faced an unprecedented rise in government secrecy over the last six years, according to a report released today by OpenTheGovernment.org and People For the American Way Foundation. Government Secrecy: Decisions Without Democracy 2007 (52 pages, PDF) documents how executive power has dramatically expanded while executive accountability has diminished.

Over the past six years, President Bush has used executive orders to limit use of the Freedom of Information Act and Presidential Records Act, expanded the power to classify information for national security reasons, and created a range of new categories of “sensitive” information. In some cases, the government has gone so far as to reclassify documents that had been available to the general public for many years.

Posted by Anne at 08:20 PM | Permalink

From CBS News:

The White House on Friday defended Vice President Dick Cheney's decision not to cooperate with a government office charged with safeguarding national security information — and denied that Cheney ever suggested the agency be shut down.

Despite objections from the National Archives and others, presidential spokesmen say Cheney's office is not bound by certain sections of a presidential executive order that seeks to protect national security information generated by the government.

Posted by Anne at 09:04 PM | Permalink

From Time:

On the same day that the CIA announced it will soon release hundreds of pages of once-classified documents that detail some of the agency's most closely guarded — and controversial — secrets of old, it was revealed that Vice President Dick Cheney has been resisting even his own Executive Branch's efforts to find out what kind of secret material his office has been stashing away over the last four years.

Cheney's office, according to a story first reported by the Chicago Tribune, has resisted attempts by a tiny federal agency to compile information — in accordance with an executive order signed by George Bush himself — on the classified documents being held by the Vice President's operation. Cheney's office argued that the Vice President's office, because it has both executive and legislative branch duties, is exempt from the order.

Cheney's dustup with the normally non-controversial National Archives and Records Administration is the latest reminder that Cheney believes he can play by his own rules. And it probably secures for Cheney a place alongside Richard Nixon in the Washington pantheon of secret-keepers.

Posted by Anne at 09:02 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

Vice President Cheney's office has refused to comply with an executive order governing the handling of classified information for the past four years and recently tried to abolish the office that sought to enforce those rules, according to documents released by a congressional committee yesterday.

Since 2003, the vice president's staff has not cooperated with an office at the National Archives and Records Administration charged with making sure the executive branch protects classified information. Cheney aides have not filed reports on their possession of classified data and at one point blocked an inspection of their office. After the Archives office pressed the matter, the documents say, Cheney's staff this year proposed eliminating it.

Posted by Anne at 09:39 PM | Permalink

From Information World Review:

MPs have passed a controversial bill to exempt themselves from the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act .

The private members bill, introduced by Conservative MP David Maclean , exempts members of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords from having to release information under the Act, which came into force in 2005.

If passed, the bill will free MPs from having to release correspondence between themselves and their constituents, and will also remove the legal duty on public bodies to disclose any correspondence they receive from or send to MPs.

Posted by Anne at 07:19 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

It is one of the most important surveys the government conducts -- the only large-scale measurement of the impact of Medicaid, food stamps, school lunches, unemployment and other safety-net programs for the poor.

But proposed Bush administration budget cuts to the Survey on Income and Program Participation, known as SIPP, will significantly reduce the amount of information it generates for the next four years.

Posted by Anne at 08:40 PM | Permalink

From CBS News:

Advocates of a bill promoting openness in government are fuming that a Republican senator is blocking a vote.

Dozens of journalism and advocacy groups supporting the Open Government Act argue it would speed up the government's response to public requests for information under the federal Freedom of Information law.

Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., says the Justice Department is concerned that it could force them to reveal sensitive information.

In a statement Thursday, Kyl said the agency's "uncharacteristically strong" opposition is reason enough to think twice about the legislation, and he will block a vote until both sides can work out the differences.

Posted by Anne at 09:11 PM | Permalink

From the California First Amendment Coalition:

Those enterprising members of the Tracy City Council have come up with a strategy to hide from public view all their written communications about government business. With a bit of legal legerdemain, they claim to be able to evade state open-government laws, transforming their communications from public records into private correspondence.

How can they do that? Simple, according to their legal pleadings in a lawsuit in San Joaquin County Superior Court: When sending or receiving email, as long as the council members use their own computer (rather than a city-owned computer), and as long as they use their own email account (rather than an account set up by the city), their messages are not subject to the Public Records Act, no matter what the emails say or to whom they’re sent.

The Public Records Act defines a public record as “any writing containing information relating to the conduct of the public’s business prepared, owned, used, or retained by any state or local agency . . .” (emphasis added.) Email that is not composed on a Tracy computer or transmitted via a Tracy email account or server is not “prepared, owned, used or retained” by the city of Tracy, argue the council members.

Posted by Anne at 07:41 PM | Permalink

From the New York Times:

There are three “rats of the week” on the home page of whosarat.com, a Web site devoted to exposing the identities of witnesses cooperating