Transparency News 5/3/17

Wednesday, May 3, 2017



State and Local Stories

Washington County Supervisors Randy Pennington and James Baker described a lengthy closed meeting Tuesday night with the board of the Virginia Highlands Small Business Incubator as a step toward healing broken communication between the two groups. The meeting, which was held at the incubator, was the result of comments made last week by Supervisor Vernon Smith. Smith said he had not received certain requested information from incubator Executive Director Cathy Lowe, who is also mayor of Abingdon. Members of the public and media were not allowed into the discussion, which lasted nearly three hours. Prior to the meeting, Lowe said the group would first discuss proprietary information and then it would be open. None of the discussion happened in public.
Bristol Herald Courier

The Virginia State Police is cleaning hundreds of computers at its state headquarters to rid them of malware that infected one computer 11 days ago and prompted the law enforcement agency to shut down its email system last week. State police restored some email accounts early this week but do not expect to complete work on 645 computers at the agency’s headquarters complex in Chesterfield County until the end of this week. Then, the agency will begin cleaning email accounts on up to 1,000 personal computers used in regional offices.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

A special grand jury found dysfunction and rank incompetence “from top to bottom” at the Rockbridge Area Department of Social Services, where reports of child abuse and neglect went unheeded. But at the end of a seven-month investigation, the grand jury had become “increasingly frustrated” that it could find no grounds on which to bring criminal charges, members wrote in a report released Tuesday. Unsealed at the order of a Circuit Court judge, the 24-page document provides the first public account of a closed-door process that began last September.
Roanoke Times

Richmond City Council members met for over 18 hours in a rambling and at times tense budget session that began Monday morning and ended just after 5 a.m. Tuesday with the work still not quite done.
Richmond Times-Dispatch



National Stories
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A federal judge is dismissing a lawsuit by animal-rights and food-safety groups who say a North Carolina law violates their free-speech and equal protection rights by helping employers punish people who get hired to steal company secrets or dig up dirt. U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder ruled Tuesday that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the Center for Food Safety and other groups don't have a case because they haven't faced consequences under the new law.
McClatchy

The National Security Agency collected more than 151 million records about Americans' phone calls in 2016, despite a new system created by Congress to curb the agency's ability to collect bulk phone records, a new report revealed Tuesday. The report, issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, offered the first evaluation of the effects of the USA Freedom Act of 2015, legislation designed to curtail the federal government's sweeping surveillance of millions of Americans' phone records. The report found that the agency still collected vast amounts of records under the new system, despite having court orders to use the system on only 42 terrorism suspects in 2016
CNET News

A privacy group sued the New York Police Department on Tuesday to demand the release of documents related to its use of facial-recognition technology, which rights groups have criticized as discriminatory and lacking in proper oversight. The lawsuit is the latest attempt to compel U.S. law enforcement agencies to disclose more about how they rely on searchable facial-recognition databases in criminal investigations. NYPD has previously produced one document in response to a January 2016 freedom of information request, despite evidence it has frequently used an advanced face-recognition system for more than five years, according to the Center for Privacy & Technology at Georgetown University law school, which filed the suit in New York state court.
Reuters

Efforts elsewhere to force the president to release his tax filings have proven fruitless thus far. On Capitol Hill, Republican leaders are blocking a bipartisan bill that would make President Trump’s returns publicly available, even though 64 percent of self-identified Republicans say the president should release his tax filings. In Trenton, New Jersey state lawmakers have passed legislation that would require presidential candidates to release their returns as a condition for their names appearing on the state’s 2020 ballot, but Republican Governor Chris Christie vetoed the bill this week. Lawmakers in Albany, however, have a much more viable opportunity to compel the immediate disclosure of the president’s tax filings—and it arises out of New York’s unique position as the sitting president’s home state.
Politico

It has only been a bit over 100 days, but the Trump administration is already known for making previously available date harder to find. To make it harder for this administration and future ones to hide data and pull info that’s already out there, Senators Gary Peters and Cory Gardner have introduced a bipartisan bill aptly called Preserving Government Data Act of 2017.
Engadget

Michigan State University is suing ESPN over a public records request involving police reports relating to ongoing sexual assault investigations. MSU argues in a court filing that it has been put in an "impossible position" because Ingham County Prosecutor Carol Siemon's office asked the university to withhold the records and ESPN asked for them to be released. An ESPN Inc. reporter submitted a Freedom of Information Act request with the university Feb. 10 seeking all police reports containing allegations of sexual assault since Dec. 10, 2016, as well as records of arrests made between Feb. 6 and Feb. 9, according to court documents. The request came one day after MSU announced the suspensions of three MSU football players and a staff member associated with the team amid a sexual assault investigation.
Lansing State Journal