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A&A: When is it okay to videotape a meeting?

FAC December 5, 2010

Q: I’m a local news stringer. I attended a community meeting. Did I have a legal right to videotape this meeting? Were my rights violated? Or was I in the wrong? A: It is unclear from your email whether the community meeting was a meeting of a legislative body, which would be covered by California’s open meeting law, known as the Brown Act. The Brown Act applies to “legislative bodies,” which include commissions, committees, boards

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FAC, News media urge Supreme Court to limit FOIA exemption in case heard this week

FAC December 2, 2010

The US Supreme Court yesterday heard arguments in a FOIA personnel exemption case,  Milner v. Department of the Navy.  FAC along with 19 other news organizations filed an amicus brief for the case. The Washington Post‘s and other news accounts suggest the Court was skeptical of the government’s effort to expand a seemingly narrow FOIA exemption in order to withhold records that, while potentially sensitive, are not sensitive enough to warrant classification. At issue is

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California college president resigns over free speech controversy

donal brown December 2, 2010

Under criticism for suspending faculty members for participating in a protest outside the school’s “free speech zone,” the president of Southwestern College resigned November 30. -db FIRE December 2, 2010 By Adam Kissel The president of California’s Southwestern College (SWC), Raj K. Chopra, abruptly resigned on November 30 under a cloud of free-speech controversy. His administration shamelessly suspended four faculty members (later reduced to three) for their part in a protest that strayed beyond the

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Restrictions to counter Wikileaks could cripple government information sharing

donal brown December 2, 2010

Corrective actions under consideration after the Wikileaks release of classified documents may produce the undesirable result of stifling information sharing in government. -db NextGov November 29, 2010 BY Aliya Sternstein The government can’t do much, from a technical standpoint, to thwart the inappropriate interception of classified information by internal personnel — without imposing controls that would stifle information sharing, former Justice Department officials say. In the aftermath of the latest release of secret government documents on

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ACLU argues against prosecuting Wikileaks

donal brown December 2, 2010

The American Civil Liberties Union argues that prosecuting organizations like Wikileaks for releasing classified information would damage the ability of the press and others to inform the public about government actions. -db American Civil Liberties Union Commentary November 29, 2010 The Wikileaks phenomenon — the existence of an organization devoted to obtaining and publicly releasing large troves of information the U.S. government would prefer to keep secret — illustrates just how broken our secrecy classification

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