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2007 Open Government Legislative Roundup: Some successes and some failures By Nick Rahaim The 2007 legislative session started with a host of promising bills that would have created more transparency and would have reversed recent judicial and Attorney General opinions permitting excessive secrecy. There were some successes and some disappointments. The major disappointment was the failure to overturn the 2006 state Supreme Court decision in Copley Press v. Superior Court, which effectively sealed all police

2007 Open Government Legislation By Nick Rahaim The 2007 Legislative session looks promising for open government advocates. Some bills seek to resurrect legislation that was defeated or vetoed in the last Legislative session. Other bills seek to overturn recent judicial rulings that are hostile to access rights. New bills would also streamline the California Public Records Act and to shed light on two of California’s more secretive government institutions: The UC Regents and police departments.

Judge Walker’s decision in the NSA surveillance case reflects a growing distrust in the federal judiciary of the Bush administration’s expansion of executive power By Peter Scheer Three cheers for Vaughn Walker. Vaughn who? you ask. Until very recently, he was also unknown to lawyers and policy makers in the White House. But on July 20 the unassuming chief judge of the federal district court in San Francisco dropped a judicial bomb. In a suit

Wanted by the FBI: Journalists’ phone records showing calls to and from confidential sources. By Peter Scheer Last week two reporters for ABC News reported that the FBI had secretly obtained their phone records—showing whom they had called and who had called them—in order to identify a confidential source as part of an apparent leak investigation. Neither ABC nor the reporters, Brian Ross and Richard Esposito, had an opportunity to go to court and try