Transparency News 6/20/17

Tuesday, June 20, 2017



State and Local Stories

Bristol Virginia leaders intend to go behind closed doors tonight to discuss concerns about BVU Authority’s pending sale of its OptiNet division and those conversations could include potential litigation. City Attorney Randall Eads cited a portion of Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act to go into closed session – which excludes the public and news media – for a 6 p.m. called meeting, prior to another 7 p.m. called meeting. “It does involve potential litigation,” Eads said of the closed session. “At this point, I am reluctant to say who the potential litigation is with. That is as far as I will go right now.”
Bristol Herald Courier

Loudoun County Commonwealth's Attorney Jim Plowman (R) will receive the list of 206,000 convicted felons who had their voting rights temporarily restored by Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) last year in an order that was eventually nixed by the Supreme Court of Virginia.  Plowman sought the list through a lawsuit against the McAuliffe administration last year. The Loudoun commonwealth's attorney inquired about the list after prosecutors and state lawmakers found that the governor had included in his original voting rights restoration order violent felons, those who had not paid restitution and those who had outstanding court costs.
Loudoun Times-Mirror



National Stories
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The U.S. Supreme Court has overturned a North Carolina law prohibiting registered sex offenders from using Facebook or other social networking sites that minors can join. The challenge was brought by Lester Gerard Parkingham Jr., a registered sex offender in North Carolina, who faced additional charges after Durham police found a Facebook page he created under an assumed name. The case raised questions about whether such laws prohibit sex offenders from participating in web-based forums, which have become virtual town squares, as they re-enter society.
Governing

For supporters of Charlotte Democratic mayoral candidate Joel Ford -- or opponents of Mayor Jennifer Roberts -- the sales pitch was clear. Donate to a new "social welfare" organization called Queen City Leadership, the group said in an email solicitation, and you can make "unlimited" personal or corporate contributions. The "confidential" donations are reported only to the Internal Revenue Service and "not for public review." In a first for a Charlotte mayoral election, at least two independent, tax-exempt "social welfare" groups plan to influence the mayor's race -- while allowing donors to give as much as they want without the public knowing.
Governing

Members of the Asian-American rock band The Slants have the right to call themselves by a disparaging name, the Supreme Court says, in a ruling that could have broad impact on how the First Amendment is applied in other trademark cases. The Slants' frontman, Simon Tam, filed a lawsuit after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office kept the band from registering its name and rejected its appeal, citing the Lanham Act, which prohibits any trademark that could "disparage ... or bring ... into contemp[t] or disrepute" any "persons, living or dead," as the court states. After a federal court agreed with Tam and his band, the Patent and Trademark Office sued to avoid being compelled to register its name as a trademark. On Monday, the Supreme Court sided with The Slants. "The disparagement clause violates the First Amendment's Free Speech Clause," Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his opinion for the court. Contrary to the Government's contention, trademarks are private, not government speech."
NPR

The U.S. Air Force has upgraded the classification of information pertaining to nuclear weapons inspections performed by the Inspector General, reducing or eliminating public references to the outcome of such inspections. Until recently, the IG weapons inspections could be described in unclassified reports. Now they will be classified at least at the Confidential level.
Secrecy News

Databases containing 198 million records on American voters were found stored on an exposed and unsecured server, ZDNet reported Monday. The voter data includes personal information and voter profiling data on what's thought to be every registered voter in the US going back more than a decade. The data, stored on an Amazon Web Services server, is owned by a Republican data analytics firm, Deep Root Analytics and was uncovered by UpGuard cyber risk analyst Chris Vickery.
CNET News