Assembly approves identity-theft laws

The 2003 General Assembly approved a number of identity-theft bills backed by Attorney General Jerry Kilgore

Kilgore said passage strengthens existing Virginia identity theft laws by:

" Prohibiting impersonation of a law enforcement officer or any other official of the Commonwealth of Virginia in order to carry out identity theft.
" Prohibiting the theft of the identity of a dead person.
" Requiring credit bureaus to note on a credit report that a victim of identity theft has filed a police report.
" Prohibiting the usage of Social Security numbers on certain government-issued documents, such as state employee IDs or student IDs.
" Removing Social Security numbers from the outside of state mailings, such as tax forms.
" Requiring the Library Board to develop regulations for destroying public documents that contain Social Security numbers.
" Allowing clerks of circuit courts to refuse to accept documents for public recordation that include Social Security Numbers.

Sen. Bill Mims (R-Leesburg) sponsored S.B. 979, and Albemarle Del. Rob Bell (R-Albermarle) sponsored HB2175, both of which stemmed from a series of public hearings conducted by the Attorney General's Task Force on Identity Theft.

"Many times victims had to spend as many as 400 hours cleaning up the financial mess," Kilgore said. "In the worst cases, people were arrested for crimes they did not commit, because someone had stolen their identities and gone on crime sprees in their name. In these ways we can better protect our consumers . . . and go after the criminals."

"Even a judge can understand"

When it comes to interpreting access law, nobody could accuse the Virginia Supreme Court justices of being anything but strict constructionists.

When the justices take an expansive view of Freedom of Information matters, more often than not they seem to presume government regularity  even if it means ignoring obvious legislative intent.

Two years ago, a unanimous court sided with a Fairfax circuit judge and reached the bizarre conclusion that FOIA did not cover constitutional officers  prosecutors, in this instance, but presumably also sheriffs, treasurers, clerks and revenue commissioners.

The '02 General Assembly begged to differ, voting unanimously to add explicit new language "that even a judge can understand," as Del. Chip Woodrum (D-Roanoke) often says.

Yet when the same court got a similar case excluding constitutional officers from the state's Data Protection Action (the old privacy act), it declared once again that the elected local officials were not covered because they aren't "agencies" as defined in the state Code.

Again, Woodrum drew up a legislative fix (H.B. 2731, 2003 session), again the General Assembly approved it unanimously.

Some constitutional officers never doubted they were covered by the privacy act; if anything, they tend to think it allows them to seal unarguably public records  a power that's supposed to rest with courts and legislators.

Yelich, Library Board receive VCOG award

Virginia State Librarian Nolan T. Yelich and the Library Board are the 2002 recipients of VCOG's Freedom of Information Award for ensuring public access to the papers of former Gov. Jim Gilmore.

. . . "No other Virginian during the past year has contributed more to the principles of openness in government," coalition President Paul McMasters said of Yelich.

McMasters, First Amendment ombudsman for the Freedom Forum, an Arlington County-based nonpartisan foundation that promotes a free press and free speech, said Yelich and the board "upheld the principle that a governor"s records belong to the office, not the officeholder."

Yelich and Gilmore battled publicly and privately for a year before the former chief executive surrendered nearly all of the official documents that he had claimed were off-limits to the state library.

Yelich and the Library Board threatened to take Gilmore to court unless he cooperated, but they reached a negotiated settlement just ahead of the deadline for legal action.

"The Library Board knew the historic Virginia tradition of governors providing citizen access to information generated by their administrations was in jeopardy," McMasters said.

The awards were presented by Frosty Landon, coalition executive director.

Robert M. O'Neil, founding president of the coalition, . . . was named recipient of the Laurence E. Richardson Award for outstanding individual contributions to open government.

A former president of the University of Virginia, O'Neil is also founding director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression in Charlottesville.

The coalition's annual media award went to Liz Szabo, a reporter for the Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk, for her stories exposing the secrecy surrounding the disciplining of doctors.

 Richmond Times-Dispatch

State library names new records coordinator

Robert F. Nawrocki, who joined the Library of Virginia as electronic records coordinator in October, 2000, has been appointed director of the Records Management Division. He replaces Preston Huff who left to take a position with the National Archives and Records Administration in Texas.

Nawrocki will direct the library's records management program, which manages the creation, use, maintenance, retention, preservation and disposition of the public records created by all state and local government organizations. A key component of the program is the preservation of Virginia's rich and historically significant public records.

Nawrocki came to the library from Dynamics Research Corporation in Arlington, where he was senior staff analyst. He has written extensively on the importance of managing and preserving electronic records.

Matricardi sentenced

Former GOP head Ed Matricardi was fined $5,000, sentenced to three months' probation and ordered to perform 180 hours of community services for eavesdropping on two conference calls among Democratic leaders to discuss the appeal of a court ruling on redistricting in March 2002. Governor Mark Warner participated in one of the two calls.

Matricardi unsuccessfully argued before U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer in Richmond that he was allowed to listen in on the call because it should have been a public meeting under FOIA.

Spencer said that what Matricardi did was wrong, adding that young people getting involved in politics "need to know the minute you put party over principle, you step over the line," according to the Washington Post.

National Security Archive offers new FOIA postings

George Washington University's National Security Archive has released its annual Freedom of Information Act posting.

According to the archive's search of online databases, documents released under federal, state and local freedom of information acts sparked more than 6,000 news stories in 2002 and the first half of 2003. Stories included revelations of major public interest, such as the use of electronic highway toll data in criminal, administrative and civil probes, the failure of government agencies to prosecute water pollution violations, the misuse of federal student aid, defective military airplanes, and the loss of explosives, mines, mortars and firearms from U.S. stockpiles.

The report features an itemized list of 20 significant news stories from the last 18 months that cited documents obtained through FOIA. In addition, the archive posted one-page summaries of 35 major federal agencies, listing up-to-date FOIA contacts, as well as information on FOIA appeals and other useful information for accessing records from the agencies.

The archive Web site also includes key documents on the history of the federal FOIA.

Phase One of the archive's Freedom of Information Audit, the most recent General Accounting Office assessments of the FOIA and E-FOIA, a User's Guide to FOIA, sample FOIA request and appeal letters, and guidance from the archive's experts on how to use the FOIA may be found at http://www.nsarchive.org/NSAEBB/NSAEBB93

Bar's mailing list will be public; FOIA Council rulings entitled to great weight,' AG Office says

Repeated requests for the State Bar's mailing list, which includes the names, addresses and phone numbers of the state's lawyers, prompted the bar to revisit its policy prohibiting the release of the list.

"We decided that we would get some additional advice from the office of the attorney general about our mailing-list policy," Tom Edmonds, executive director, said.

"The Freedom of Information Advisory Council," said Senior Assistant Attorney General James W. Hopper, recently ruled "that the mailing list would be subject to the provisions of FOIA and therefore made available by a FOIA request."
The council's opinion "is presumed to be correct and entitled to great weight unless plainly wrong," Hopper added. "We're not able to say it's plainly wrong. Therefore, our advice would be to comply with that conclusion."

Some executive committee members expressed their concern that releasing the list would represent an invasion of privacy. Members considered the idea of allowing lawyers to "opt out" of inclusion on the list or, in the alternative, giving notice that the list could be released.

The problem, as at least one committee member noted, is that someone could file a FOIA request for the list tomorrow, and the bar would have its hands tied.

"If we don't follow it," said Theophlise L. Twitty of Portsmouth, "I think at some point we'll be sued for violating FOIA."

The next day, the bar leadership unanimously voted to rescind the bar's existing policy and permit the release of the mailing list upon a FOIA request.

 adapted from Virginia Lawyers Weekly

Loudoun's board censures one of its own

The elected Loudoun County School Board censured one of its members , but refused to say why.

The Loudoun Times-Mirror said editorially, "Democratic principles require that the public know why the board members took that action."

"It is ridiculous to suggest that voters who elected each member of the School Board should see one School Board member censured by the other members, but should not see the information on which the action was based. Voters should have information so they may judge, individually, whether or not (J. Warren) Geurin erred."

The editorial added, "the School Board received legal advice that it could meet secretly about whatever Geurin did or didn't do because the personnel exemption' in Virginia's Freedom of Information Act uses the term public officials' instead of the more restrictive public employees,' which was the intent of legislators."

Va. agency tightens records access after law firm's shocking' usage

The family law firm of Eric I. Cantor, a Virginia representative in Congress, searched 736,000 wage records over 12 months after it inappropriately was given access to a state database on Virginia workers, state officials said recently.

The firm, Cantor & Cantor, was hired by the Henrico County [Commonwealth] Attorney's Office to handle debt collections, but never should have been given access to the state database, said James N. Ellenberger, deputy commissioner of the Virginia Employment Commission.

The incident has caused the VEC to place new restrictions on access to its database, which contains information on all of Virginia's 3.5 million wage earners.

"It's a serious, serious issue,'" Ellenberger said after disclosing the security breach to a legislative panel. The breach was discovered during an audit in September.

"I think about the numbers, and it's pretty shocking," he said. "We have no idea what they used this for and it's offensive. . . . Anybody would be concerned because, if it happened in Henrico County, I would be hard-pressed to say that it hasn't happened elsewhere."

The state clamp-down comes at a time when heightened public sensitivity to privacy issues has caused the Bush administration to place new restrictions on medical records and has generated criticism over the federal government's incursions on personal information in the name of homeland security.

Cantor, a former member of the Virginia General Assembly, no longer practices with the Henrico law firm, which is headed by his father, Eddie Cantor. A spokesman for the congressman had no comment other than to note that the Republican has not been a member of the law firm for three years.

The VEC allows workers compensation, social services, law enforcement and local government officials to use its database for debt collections and to monitor child custody payments. By punching in someone's Social Security number, anyone with access to the computer can obtain information on that person's wages.

About 300 government agencies use the database, Ellenberger said.

In an editorial, The Virginian-Pilot accused state officials of ignoring the massive privacy breach and demanded a state police investigation.

VEC officials were described as outraged by a little-noticed law approved in the last General Assembly and sponsored by Del. Jack Reid (R-Henrico), a political ally of the congressman and the commonwealth's attorney. Conveniently, Reid's bill legalizes what Henrico County did, giving it the cover of legitimacy.

At a minimum, the editorial said, "these questions need answering. Why were so many searches conducted? Who and how many people had access to the database and how did they get it? Did all of the records searched belong to people who owed fines in Henrico County? How was the wage information used, and was any of it diverted to political purposes? It is easy to see how valuable such knowledge might be in fund raising or targeting direct mail, for instance."
"Meanwhile, if one county handed out access to the wage database in violation of the law others may have done so as well. That bears investigating.

"Private wages are not supposed to be posted for the world to see. Virginians deserve to know that state officials take seriously the protection of personal privacy."

 The Virginian-Pilot

Police chiefs get new FOIA manual

The Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police recently revised its 3-year-old FOI booklet and distributed it to each police department and sheriff's office in the state.

Funding was provided by the Department of Criminal Justice Services.

Dana Schrad, VACP's executive director, said the booklets are in great demand and are also distributed at each year's training sessions for about 50 new police chiefs and deputy chiefs.

FOI training has been included in VACP's programs for a number of years, but it was stepped up after the General Assembly overhauled the FOI law in 1999. In late 1998, a survey by Virginia newspapers had revealed widespread non-compliance with FOIA by most sheriffs and police departments.

VACP launched its New Chiefs School about two years ago, with the help of the Virginia Police Chiefs Foundation.
Warren Carmichael, former public relations coordinator for the Fairfax County police department, was instrumental in helping to develop VACP's FOI manual.

Carmichael retired last year, but continues to help with open-records training.

Falwell deletes a cybersquatter

The Rev. Jerry Falwell has officially obtained the right to use his namesake Web site.

As of late June, typing http://www.jerryfalwell.com into a Web browser will take you to Falwell ministries, not the Falwell parody that once ran on the site.

Falwell said lawyers for Gary Cohn, an Illinois man who was running the parody site on the domains http://www.jerryfalwell.com and http://www.jerryfallwell.com, informed him they would turn over rights to the domains. Falwell planned to file a lawsuit in federal court to gain legal rights to the sites.

Falwell argued the Web sites were an illegal use of his trademarks, libelous, unfair competition and cybersquatting.

The name Jerry Falwell had been trademarked with Falwell's talk show "Listen America" several years ago. "We had forgotten we'd done it," he said.

"It's unfortunate that we had to spend two ye