A case pushed to the California Supreme Court by the Contra Costa Times, has delivered a victory for open government advocates. The court concluded that the public has a right to know the income of government employees, that disclosure does not constitute an unwarranted invasion of privacy. The Times was victorious in the lower court but unions representing government employees appealed to the Supreme Court. The AP story cites a union representative who claimed that releasing the salaries of the public servants would lead to unwanted sales calls. That has to be the most weak, laughable argument for restricting government-generated records which potentially could expose all kinds of government misdeeds.

The same AP story reports that in another ruling the court added the California Department of Justice database records of police officers’ names and hiring and termination dates to the list of public information. This is good news for police misconduct investigations, which will be assisted by being able to track the movement of law enforcement between departments. I just hope the Contra Costa Times publishes the entire salary database on its Web site, as many others have done.

Sharpen your pencils and start drafting those Public Records Act requests.

The citizenry and government both come to the wrong conclusions about the ready availability of public records on the Internet. The City of Raleigh, North Carolina and Wake County joined dozens of other communities that have begun integrating crime activity into interactive mapping. Local real estate developers and agents object, believing that “public crime data… will lower housing prices.” Some people are getting acquainted with the meaning of “public records” for the first time through the government Web sites, complaining about an invasion of privacy because others can see their address and name in the Assessor’s records. Alternatively, they embrace access when the records concern people they want to know about, such as sex offenders. Privacy advocates have campaigned to seal criminal records for first-time offenders, which Florida is doing at 3 times the number as 10 years ago, according to this analysis. Even in these cases, law enforcement continues to keep a record of the criminal history.

Public officials sometimes sound defensive when bringing public records into the Internet age, asserting that particular types of personal information isn’t included. Or they remove the documents or data that was once on the Web, as in the case of the El Paso County, Colorado inmate log. The Sheriff has restricted the listing of the criminal charges to classification numbers as a reaction to inmate assaults. If the availability of public records on the Internet isn’t mandated by law, as in the case of the sex offender registries, it’s always subject to being withdrawn.

Agencies could better serve the goal of open government by reducing the number of exemptions to disclosure. The Washington State Attorney General announced a meeting to review the Public Disclosures Act exemptions, which have grown from 10 in 1972 to more than 300 today.

The County Clerk of Oneida County, New York removed land records from its Web site, a promise of her political campaign. Now, she proposes to make document images available online to a handpicked elite, including attorneys (to whom she was speaking when this offer was made), ostensibly because the records are used in the course of their work. You see the basis for redefining the “public” in “public records”, right? Arbitrary. Capricious. Preferential.

The State of Connecticut Judicial Branch is reviewing family law cases that were sealed before 2003 to determine which are eligible for a change in status, then publishing the list of cases. The court outlines its objective.

The plan calls for a review to determine: (1) whether the cases were properly designated as sealed; (2) whether the docket sheets, which set forth the chronology of the case, may be displayed on the Judicial Branch website; and (3) whether the motions and orders to seal the file may be made publicly available. At this point, there are approximately 500 of these cases statewide. Certain cases that have unique issues, including files that are unavailable pursuant to Practice Book Section 7-10, are not included in this phase of the review process, but those files will be addressed in a subsequent phase.

Teacher disciplinary actions finalized in 2007 are now at the Web site for the Florida Department of Education, Bureau of Professional Practices.

An Illinois appeals court ruled that employment contracts of state employees are public records.
Read the story
Read the case opinion, Jerry Reppert And The Gazette Democrat V. Southern Illinois University And Walter V. Wendler.

A Monterey County, California advocacy organization has appealed a ruling by a county judge who supported Monterey County’s denial of a public records request related to pending litigation. The organization wants to know how much money the county spending on land use litigation.

The profile you proudly blast across the Internet today may be one that makes you cringe tomorrow. Perhaps this is more the case as the general use of the Internet grows out of adolescence. You need not quake because for every Web faux pas there is a fee-based solution. DefendMyName claims to “replace negative Internet postings with positive information about you or your business” and to elevate your propaganda above the negative portrayals found through the search engines. Essentially, this service finds relevant social networking sites and adds your profile, and posts your personal image press release on relevant business and industry forums.

ReputationDefender speaks to the fear of the job seeker or parent that there may be some virtual image that needs cleansing. After they find these declarations (much of that, no doubt, created by the subject), reputationdefender sets about contacting “third parties, including creators of unwelcome content, hosts of unwelcome content, and other parties who might have control or authority over such content.” The User Agreement addresses any inclination you may have to engage this service targeting someone other than yourself. Search engine optimization is a more technical phrase for much of what these companies do. Here’s another one.

I guess I can classify my work as reputation research, which I do on behalf of others, not for the purpose of scrubbing an online image but to build a biography of admissions and activities. Researchers and investigators have always done this, but the popularity of the Internet has opened an area of specialized research. Social networking sites, which have been mined by companies for background on potential hires, have also connected people who want to find each other.

Authenticating found material may be difficult due to the anonymous uses of the Internet. Inevitably, people will use this shield to present favorable views of themselves while disguised in a persona. Be warned: Those who “anonymously” say nasty things about others may be uncovered and sued. The ability to alter digital content could have important implications for the dissemination and identification of official government documents and information.

Getting concrete about the work of uncovering reputation for professional uses, the authors of, Finding and Researching Experts and Their Testimony, offer a detailed guide to finding background and verifying credentials of various types of experts. Some of the sources discussed are: use of search engines, expert directories, the expert’s Web site, licensing boards, publications, news, discussion board posts, court dockets and other public records.

An older set of articles on researching people on the Internet is a good introduction.

Various sources for finding background on people are listed at People Finder Guide.

The folks at Oakland Crimespotting have elegantly rendered the crime data (if such attributes can be applied to crime) from the Oakland, California CrimeView, operated by the Oakland Police Department.

The Web page opens with crime-specific color coded icons placed at the crime sites on an interactive map. Pan in all directions to easily view the types of reported criminal activity throughout Oakland. Hover over the icon to get a popup listing the date, time and type of crime, and a hypelink report number that opens a larger view of the selected crime area. Receive new crime reports by email or RSS.

The Oakland government CrimeView site takes you through a 5-part process before you get to the crime map. If you want to search by address or intersection and you don’t know where those are on the map, the Oakland government site may be a better starting point. I wrote about this site and other crime mapping links last year. Since then, the LA Times has developed a Homicide Map for Los Angeles.

It’s not just you. The federal government has become less responsive and more stingy with FOIA requests across agencies and types of requests, according to Still Waiting
After All These Years:An in-depth analysis of FOIA performance from 1998 to 2006. The report author, Coalition of Journalists for Open Government headlines the findings:

Backlog: Two of every five requests filed in 2006 were not processed

Caseload: Requests fell for the second straight year, but the backlog still increased

Waiting Time: Long waits for information continue

Information Released: Full grants hit an all-time low

Appeals: Don’t bet on winning, the odds are against it

Costs, Efficiency: More spent on processing by fewer hands

FOIA Fees: Charges pay an insignificant part of the costs

Exemptions: Citations on the rise, particularly regarding law enforcement

Expedited Requests: No real gain for those not rejected outright

Apparently the federal government doesn’t fear its citizenry…

Privatization v. The Public’s Right To Know summarizes recent attempts by state and federal government to avoid scrutiny, wall off public records from open access and privatize government functions. Told through anecdotal stories, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press report highlights some major disadvantages to public safety and open access in the privatization of government functions. And the judiciary has often issued confusing opinions that puts the onus on the public to prove the right of access. The multi-part report also links to court cases and news accounts.

An extract from the Open Government Guide addresses each states law related to public records and nongovernmental bodies.

The trend by courts to restrict the availability of criminal records made a short swing past the American Bar Association which killed a proposal at its annual conference on Friday that would have recommend state and federal courts seal criminal records. Vigorous lobbying by media First Amendment advocates and business groups lead to the measuring being withdrawn before it got to a vote. Initial story reported by Corruption Chronicles.

An Opinion issued by the Arkansas Supreme Court that revises permissible access to court records is now in effect. Information in case records that is now considered confidential includes litigant addresses and phone numbers, Social Security numbers and information about cases expunged or sealed. Bulk sale of criminal case information to the public or for commercial purposes is prohibited.

Cut-and-paste does not an admissible court document make when collecting data from an Internet Web site, according to a Nebraska District Court. Read the analysis at Internet Business Law Services.

Although the Federal Highway Administration collects all kinds of data on the condition of bridges it’s not presented in a consumer friendly format. You can download files by Deficient Bridges by State and Highway System, Highway Bridge by Owner or Bridge by State.

Query the citizen run National Bridge Inventory Database, which has been overwhelmed with hits since the recent Minneapolis collapse, for any bridge data, but here’s Minneapolis NBI Structure 9340.

A Deficient or Obsolete Bridges database with a state by state map has been assembled by MSNBC. Select a state, then click on the small type link, “Click here to see major state bridges on list”. Find out whether the bridge is obsolete or deficient (an engineering distinction, both of which sound bad) and its safety rating. Keep in mind that the last structural evaluation for the Minneapolis bridge concluded: “Meets minimum tolerable limits to be left in place as is”.

There are actually enough bloggers consistently writing on FOIA, open government and access to public records that we now have our own Carnival - a rotating group of writers who do regular round ups of the“Best posts from the FOIA-sphere.”

This week, Leslie Graves of State Sunshine and Open Records is our host. I encourage you to take a glance and discover some new blogs.

While I’m in the referral vein let me introduce you to an invaluable Internet research reference manual, The Lawyer’s Guide To Fact Finding On the Internet. Don’t be put off by the word lawyer. This guide is for hands-on researchers who could benefit from an Internet taming charm. And who couldn’t?

The authors are Internet research trainers and this book reflects their expert training instincts in the way the material is organized and presented. This collection of detailed reviews of Web sites - sorted by subject (not a dread alphabetical list) - is a reference manual any level of information researcher can use to find, well, facts! Chapter topics include search strategies, search engines, public records, government sources, finding and backgrounding people and company research. These are just a few areas covered in this 800 page Internet investigator’s bible. Each listing has the Web site location, whether or not a fee is associated with any part of the site, the content you’ll find here, the authors’ rating and tips on how to use the site. View the Table of Contents, the Index and a sample entry to get a sense of just how fabulous a resource the authors have assembled.