Search Results for: electronic records – Page 26

To evade responsibility for the death of inmates in the county jail, San Diego County asked the court, by way of discovery, to direct a reporter to submit all her notes, documents and interviews, even those unpublished. In attempting this end run, the county ignored the First Amendment and California’s shield laws. The county claimed they had a responsibility to find out the truth so had to gain access to the reporter’s work. The judge

The FBI closed its six year long investigation of an award-winning documentary filmmaker after failing to find any crime or threat to national security. During the six years, the government subjected Laura Poitras to numerous border searches and interrogations. Airport delays numbered over 50 from 2006 to 2012. Poitras and the EFF contend that she was singled out for her films about post-9-11 life in Yemen and Iraq that ran counter to the U.S. government

San Francisco is studying whether to use open-source software for voting. Some claim that open-source systems will provide increased control, transparency and security as programmers will  be able to assess the voting system before election day to spot bugs and suggest changes. The public will also know more about how votes are tallied. Private vendors of voting machines understandably keep details of the operation secret. (San Francisco Chronicle, September 3, 2017, by Dominic Fracassa) A

Los Angeles County will no longer be able to hide records of license plates collected from citizens of all stripes that they claimed were investigative records. The California Supreme Court sided with the ACLU and EFF that the automated scanning of license plates were not tied to any particular crime so could not be kept secret as part of a criminal investigation. To protect drivers’ privacy, the trial court will determine how the data is