Montana seeks balancing act with wildlife location data, hunting ethics; Independent Record, February 6, 2020

Tom Kuglin, Independent Record; Montana seeks balancing act with wildlife location data, hunting ethics


"While GPS collars are invaluable to researchers and wildlife managers, the data they produce are the subject of debate about who should have access to the information and why. Some hunters have requested and received the exact latitude and longitude of collared animals, and that has conservation groups and lawmakers concerned about violating the edict of fair chase hunting or the potential to monetize the data."

Trump’s actions raise fears about access to government data; The Spokesman-Review, March 8, 2017

Stuart Leavenworth and Adam Ashton, The Spokesman-Review; Trump’s actions raise fears about access to government data

"Wondering who is visiting the White House? The web-based search has gone dark. Curious about climate change? Some government sites have been softened or taken down. Worried about racial discrimination in housing? Laws have been introduced to bar federal mapping of such disparities. Federal rules protecting whistleblowers? At least one has been put on hold.

Since taking office, the Trump administration has made a series of moves that have alarmed groups with a stake in public access to information – historians, librarians, journalists, climate scientists, internet activists, to name a few. Some are so concerned they have thrown themselves into “data rescue” sessions nationwide, where they spend their weekends downloading and archiving federal databases they fear could soon be taken down or obscured...

“What is unprecedented is the scale of networking and connectivity of groups working on this, and the degree it is being driven by librarians and scientists and professors,” said Alex Howard, deputy director of the Sunlight Foundation, a group that tracks transparency in government."

Data disappeared from Obama administration site promoting transparency; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 22, 2017

Tracie Mauriello, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 

Data disappeared from Obama administration site promoting transparency

"If you wanted to know who visited the White House, how much the president’s secretary is paid, or which state has the most federally funded teaching positions, the information was just a few clicks away. With a bit more technical knowledge, you could explore public data sets to analyze the president’s budget, or look for trends in government spending.

No more.

Dozens of data sets disappeared last week from Open.WhiteHouse.gov, a website the Obama administration created to promote government transparency.

Visitors to the website now and find a message saying “check back for new data.” But it isn’t clear when any new data will be posted, and government watchdogs aren’t confident that it will ever happen.

“We are working to open up the new sites,” White House press aide Helen Ferre emailed in response to questions. She did not respond to follow-up questions about the content of the “new sites,” whether they will include visitor logs, why data sets were removed, and when aides will post new information...

The data the Obama administration provided hasn’t been deleted. Rather it’s been preserved by the National Archives in accordance with a law that prohibits federal data from being destroyed. Find it at https://open.obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/...

The data is no longer in a user-friendly format. Users have to have the technical knowledge to unpack zipfiles and must have software that can handle large files with millions of rows of data."

Will open data survive Trump?; InfoWorld, 1/16/17

Eric Knorr, InfoWorld; 

Will open data survive Trump?

"The incredible quantity of data collected across the federal government is a national treasure. Few other countries on earth apply the same energy, funding, and rigor to assembling such extensive stores. Even if ordinary citizens don't go to Data.gov for entertainment, both policymakers and business leaders need objective data to make sound decisions.

Before joining the Sunlight Foundation, Howard worked at O’Reilly Media, starting there a few years after Tim O’Reilly convened a group of open government advocates to develop the eight principles of open government data in 2007. Howard says the idea of open data really goes back to the Constitution, which stipulates an "Enumeration" (aka, census) be held to apportion Congressional seats -- an indication that "open data is in the DNA of the USA." Even further, open data harkens to the original Enlightenment idea that reason based on fact should govern human action.

We'll see how that quaint notion survives the postfact era. Meanwhile, consider contributing to the Sunlight Foundation and the Electronic Frontier Foundation."

More New Ways to Explore Patent Data; Blog by Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO Michelle K. Lee, Director's Forum Blog, 1/12/17

Michelle K. Lee, Blog by Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO Michelle K. Lee, Director's Forum Blog; More New Ways to Explore Patent Data

"Making patent data accessible to the public has been a cornerstone of this agency’s policy since its inception. I’m pleased to announce yet another step we’ve taken at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to make such data even easier for the public to understand and use, namely the addition of new features to our patent data visualization and analysis tool, PatentsView. First launched in 2014, PatentsView provides the public a variety of ways to interactively engage, through a web-based platform, the highest-quality patent data available. The underlying database connects 40 years’ worth of information about inventors, their organizations, and their locations in unprecedented ways. PatentsView is a key component of our open data efforts to improve the accessibility, usability, and transparency of U.S. patent data...

You could argue that the innovations documented in our records may very well, collectively, constitute the world’s largest repository of scientific and technological knowledge. But the larger a data set, the more challenging it is to find useful information or trends or, put another way, to separate the signal from the noise. This collaborative tool, developed by the USPTO’s Office of the Chief Economist in conjunction with the American Institutes for Research, New York University, the University of California at Berkeley, Twin Arch Technologies, and Periscopic, aims to make that sorting and separation possible. The shared public and private effort in creating and improving the platform is symbolized in the “.org” domain of http://www.PatentsView.org.

By providing new tools and data to the public, PatentsView demonstrates this agency’s continuing commitment to open data, open government, and evidence-based policymaking."

Pittsburgh City Council pushes forward on confidentiality measure; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 11/3/16

Adam Smeltz, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Pittsburgh City Council pushes forward on confidentiality measure:

"Pittsburgh City Council forged ahead Wednesday with plans that could cost members triple-digit fines for leaking confidential details from closed-door meetings.

Council members voted 7-1 to advance comprehensive revisions for their own operating rules, setting up the 15-page proposal for a final vote Monday. Dissenting Councilwoman Darlene Harris lashed out against potential fines that could reach $500 for members who breach attorney-client privilege, saying the idea amounts to “a gag order.”"

Bowser’s $9,000 in Trump change; Washington Post, 7/29/16

Colbert I. King, Washington Post; Bowser’s $9,000 in Trump change:

'What the Trump Organization sees in Bowser is for it to know. What Bowser sees in Trump is for D.C. citizens to know. To rid the city of any false idea that Bowser is not offended by Trump or is influenced by the Trump contributions, she should return all of the Trump family money or donate it to worthy causes.

And as mayor, she must deal with real estate mogul Trump and his business partners at arm’s length and with someone else in the room with a tape recorder."

President Obama Signs FOIA Reform Bill into Law on 50th Anniversary; Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 6/30/16

Luis Ferre Sadurni, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press; President Obama Signs FOIA Reform Bill into Law on 50th Anniversary:

"President Barack Obama today signed a bill that significantly reforms and improves access to public records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The signing marked the culmination of open government advocates' battle to reform part of FOIA ahead of the law's 50th anniversary on July 4th.

One of the most notable provisions is the law's mandate for agencies to operate from a presumption of openness, ensuring that information is withheld only under one of FOIA's nine exemptions. The bill codifies Obama's 2009 memorandum sent on his first day in office — which ordered federal departments to operate under this presumption.

The law also paves the way for the creation of a single online portal to accept FOIA requests for any agency, similar to FOIAonline, already in use by 12 agencies and offices. The Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) will also be strengthened with the reforms, permitting it to make recommendations for improving FOIA without necessarily seeking input from other agencies.

A White House fact sheet provides more details about the law and announced new members of the FOIA Advisory Committee."

Must stop bill to copyright public records; San Jose Mercury News, 6/28/16

Thomas Peele, San Jose Mercury News; Must stop bill to copyright public records:

"In a blog post EFF legislative counsel Ernesto Falcon made it clear the potential chilling effect on free speech and public participation Stone has proposed.

"Such a broad grant of copyright authority to state and local governments will chill speech, stifle open government, and harm the public domain," Falcon wrote. "If a citizen infringed on a state owned copyright by making a copy of a government publication, or reading that publication out loud in a public setting, or uploading it to the Internet, they could be liable. ..."

Does Stone want to keep news organizations and others from freely posting public records that show wrongdoing, abuse, corruption, misuse of public funds?

Rather than working to make access to records more difficult, state lawmakers should working to make them more accessible."

California's Legislature Wants to Copyright All Government Works; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), 5/13/16

Ernesto Falcon, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); California's Legislature Wants to Copyright All Government Works:

"AB 2880 will give state and local governments dramatic powers to chill speech, stifle open government, and harm the public domain.

The California Assembly Committee on Judiciary recently approved a bill (AB 2880) to grant local and state governments' copyright authority along with other intellectual property rights. At its core, the bill grants state and local government the authority to create, hold, and exert copyrights, including in materials created by the government. For background, the federal Copyright Act prohibits the federal government from claiming copyright in the materials it creates, but is silent on state governments. As a result, states have taken various approaches to copyright law with some granting themselves vast powers and others (such as California) forgoing virtually all copyright authority at least until now.

EFF strongly opposes the bill. Such a broad grant of copyright authority to state and local governments will chill speech, stifle open government, and harm the public domain. It is our hope that the state legislature will scuttle this approach and refrain from covering all taxpayer funded works under a government copyright."

Post-Gazette loses court fight to block state agencies from deleting emails; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/26/16

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Post-Gazette loses court fight to block state agencies from deleting emails:

"The Post-Gazette and other media outlets said the practice violated the due process rights of the public seeking records under the state’s Right-to-Know law.

The Commonwealth Court rejected the argument, saying the Right-to-Know law doesn’t have a record-retention requirement, doesn’t outlaw destruction of records and governs only whether existing records should be made public.

The Supreme Court affirmed the lower court and denied the paper’s request for an oral argument."

Obama’s Secrecy Problem; Slate, 4/15/16

Fred Kaplan, Slate; Obama’s Secrecy Problem:

"Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, told me Thursday, “This is a time of particularly promising ferment over secrecy policy. There is a recognition, even within the national-security apparatus, that the classification system has overreached and needs to be pruned back.” Yet by all measures, the bureaucracies persist in resisting this pruning, Congress won’t allocate the money for the shears, and the president hasn’t mustered the full attention and commitment that the task requires. Information may want to be free, but Washington has it wrapped in a tangle."

Obama claimed to want transparency. His actions suggest the opposite; Guardian, 3/9/16

Trevor Timm, Guardian; Obama claimed to want transparency. His actions suggest the opposite:

"The Obama administration has taken a lot of well-deserved criticism over the years for claiming to be the most transparent presidency ever while actually being remarkably opaque, but they’ve now reached a new low: newly released documents show they aggressively lobbied Congress to kill bipartisan transparency reform that was based on the administration’s own policy.

In a move open government advocates are calling “ludicrous”, the administration “strongly opposed” the passage of bipartisan Freedom of Information Act (Foia) reform behind closed doors in 2014. The bill was a modest and uncontroversial piece of legislation which attempted to modernize the law for the internet age and codify President Obama’s 2009 memo directing federal agencies to adopt a “presumption of openness”.

Through a Foia lawsuit, the Freedom of the Press Foundation (the organization I work for) obtained a six-page talking points memo that the Justice Department distributed to House members protesting virtually every aspect of the proposed legislation in incredibly harsh language – despite the fact that some of the provisions were based almost word-for-word on the Justice Department’s own supposed policy (you can see a side-by-side comparison here).

Worse, Vice’s Jason Leopold is also reporting that the administration is conducting similar lobbying efforts around this year’s attempt to reform Foia in time for the law’s 50th anniversary this summer.

This is a shameful move by an administration that is constantly touting its open government and transparency bona fides despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary."