A growing menace, this state-level claiming of executive privilege: Does the governor have the right to to shield documents from public view simply because she’s the governor? That’s a question the state Supreme Court late last month announced it would consider. The case is brought by the Freedom Foundation, a libertarian think tank based in Olympia. [...]
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Charles and I are trying something new – we posted a sponsor’s link on the right side of the page, for PeopleFinders. As former newspaper folk, we appreciate the idea of advertising, and we also know the importance of not co-mingling ads with editorial content. So we’ll be upfront – we aren’t beholden to anyone [...]
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Four years for the TSA to hand over complaints? Here’s the story, from ProPublica’s Michael Grabell… From intrusive pat-downs to body scans to perceived profiling, the Transportation Security Administration always seems to be the target of complaints. Here’s another one: It took the TSA almost four years to tell me what people complained about — in 2008. [...]
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Taking a week off to get some real sunshine, In Mexico. Keep ‘em honest until I return! Charles
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Well, they may as well have named this mind-bogglingly bad bill that, for it will effectively provide the most secretive and untraceable communications (read influence-peddling) channel in any state anywhere. This is the single worst FOI exemption I have seen in years: People filing Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, requests may not be permitted [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Privacy, proposed exemptions, third persons, Virginia | Leave a Comment »
A provocative piece… Have you ever filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the FBI and received a written response from the agency stating that it could not locate records responsive to your request? If so, there’s a chance the FBI may have found some documents, but for unknown reasons, the agency’s FOIA [...]
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Public employees who intentionally circumvented public meeting and disclosure laws could be subject to fines under legislation reintroduced in the Generally Assembly. The bills would let a judge fine a person $100 for first offense and $500 for subsequent violations of the Open Door Law or Access to Public Records Act. The act requires meetings [...]
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Theo Karantsalis, a soft-spoken librarian who teaches research classes at Miami Dade College between freelancing for Miami New Times and the Miami Herald, has become an unlikely central character in a hotly contested federal case that has free-speech advocates ready to clash with top D.C. officials. In a case that has now made its way onto the U.S. [...]
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A legal group filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit on Monday asking that videotapes showing the interrogation of a terror detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, be made public. The suit filed in the Southern District of New York is focused on interrogation techniques used on Mohammed al-Qahtani, a man U.S. authorities have said was [...]
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And they say FOI has no street cred? Wu-Tang Clan’s Ol’ Dirty Bastard was “heavily involved” in “murder, car-jackings … and the sale of drugs [and] illegal guns”, according to a newly released FBI report. The FBI’s 93-page file on ODB, revealed in a Freedom of Information request, connects the rapper with a litany of serious crimes in the [...]
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