From Electronic Frontier Foundation:
New data from law enforcement agencies across the country has confirmed what EFF has long been afraid of: while police are routinely using cell phone location tracking information, only a handful of agencies are bothering to obtain search warrants.
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From Watchdog.org:
While other states are finding evidence of school test score manipulation, the Texas Education Agency has managed to quash open records requests that would allow the public to investigate such a thing in this state.
In two recent open records requests, the TEA has successfully argued that the information that would make an investigation possible is not a public record.
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Read More… from Records used in other states to uncover cheating on tests not open in Texas
From Watchdog.org:
Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Adkisson has presented his initial legal argument in a fight to keep emails from his personal account private, even though he acknowledges he was discussing public business through those emails.
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From RCFP
A Pennsylvania appellate court ruled on Tuesday that the state Department of Transportation must release records on speed enforcement devices used by state police agencies in full – without any redactions – under the state's Right-to-Know Law to an engineer whose speeding ticket sparked the requests.
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From California Watch
Biotech companies with operations in California – the birthplace of the industry and home to one-third of the country’s biotech firms – spent $40 million on federal lobbying between 2009 and 2011, according to an analysis released yesterday by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Center for Responsive Politics.
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Read More… from Calif. biotech firms spend $40 million on lobbying in 3 years
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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Read More… from Editorial: More local compliance on FOI laws needed
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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From SantaFeNewMexican.com:
For the better part of the past year, city officials resisted The New Mexican's attempts to bring to the public eye documents pertaining to alleged embezzlement of public funds from the Parking Division.
The newspaper repeatedly requested the documents under the provisions of the state's Inspection of Public Records Act.
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Read More… from New Mexico Officials block efforts to obtain public records
From Social Science Research Network:
“Open government” used to carry a hard political edge: it referred to politically sensitive disclosures of government information. The phrase was first used in the 1950s, in the debates leading up to passage of the Freedom of Information Act. But over the last few years, that traditional meaning has blurred, and has shifted toward technology.
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