AG says broad request for emails doesn't have to be fulfilled for six months

The Boone County clerk can make a man who requested almost a quarter of a million emails wait six months to get the records, Attorney General Jack Conway said in an open-records decision released today.

On Nov. 19, 2012, attorney Paul Croushore requested emails sent from or to 10 individuals, and containing any of 69 terms, during 2011. The clerk's office told him he would have to wait six months, "given the broad scope of the request and the necessity of reviewing each of the estimated 50,000 responsive emails to redact protected information," unless he wanted to reduce the number of search terms, while reserving the right to add more later, the decision says.

Croushore appealed to Conway's office, which cited a decision this year in a case involving the Campbell County Library. It also noted that the decision urged records requesters to "frame their requests as narrowly as possible and, if unable or unwilling to do so, to expect reasonable delays in records production." That decision is 12-ORD-097. Today's is 12-ORD-228.

Illinois' anti-eavesdropping law can't be used against those who record police, high court says

The U.S. Supreme Court has let stand an appellate-court ruling in Illinois that "The state's anti-eavesdropping law violates free-speech rights when used against people who tape law enforcement officers," the Chicago Tribune reports. "Opponents of the law say the right to record police is vital to guard against abuses." (Read more)

Paul objects to FCC proposal to make stations put political advertising information online

Many elements of the Tea Party have been outspoken in favor of government transparency, but for the U.S. senators most identified with the movement, that does not extend to making political television expenses more accessible to the public.

Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky (right), Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Mike Lee of Utah "have asked the Federal Communications Commission to reconsider its proposal to have TV stations put their political files online," reports John Eggerton of Multichannel News. They were joined by Roy Blunt of Missouri and John Boozman of Arkansas.

The political files, which show who buys the time, how much and when, must be made available for public inspection at a station or cable-company office during regular business hours. The FCC is expected to approve April 27 on a regulation that would require stations in major markets to put the information in an online database. "Broadcasters argue . . . that to maintain an online, real-time system would cost staff time and money better spent on local news and other public service," Eggerton writes.

OPINION: That money could also be spent on executive salaries, shareholder profits or some other thing besides public service. In their letter, the senators said the proposal would carry "heavy compliance costs," but as someone who has inspected many of these files at stations, and is familiar with how the same information is already maintained electronically, it's hard for me to imagine that the compliance costs would be very high. And putting them online would make them much more accessible to rural journalists. –Al Cross, director, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues

UPDATE, April 9: Because of complaints from stations, "The proposal will give smaller stations two more years to start uploading new additions to their files about political ad spending. At the outset, only the affiliates of ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox in the top 50 TV markets will be required to do so," reports Brian Stelter of The New York Times. "The FCC says the initial uploading will cost less than $1,000 for a typical station, and will save the stations money over time by avoiding printing and storage costs. The uploaded files will be searchable — but only inside one file at a time." (Read more)

Corie Wright, senior policy counsel for Free Press, which supports online posting, told Eggerton, "It's baffling that these senators would want to hide public information in dusty filing cabinets when it could be made available to their constituents via the Internet. The public wants and needs to know who's trying to influence them over the public airwaves -- and the FCC appears to be doing the right thing by bringing this antiquated system into the 21st Century."

Eggerton notes, "Putting the political files online is part of a larger FCC effort to move station public files online and into a database managed by the FCC that is more easily searchable by the public." (Read more)

Kentucky looks like only state that denies access to recordings made by police-cruiser cameras

Kentucky appears to be the only state that denies public access to recordings made by cameras in police cruisers. Scott Wartman of The Kentucky Enquirer discovered that this week as he followed up on the guilty plea by Covington City Commissioner Steve Frank for driving under the influence.

"Open-records laws across the country compiled by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press show that only in Kentucky is the public not allowed to view video of DUI traffic stops," Wartman writes. "First Amendment experts say they don't know of any other state with an exemption for DUI videos," and some think the law "raises constitutional issues and violates the public's right to know." Making cruiser recordings available "serves as an important check on police abuse," David Hudson, a scholar at the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, told Wartman.

The law was passed in 1984 with major changes to Kentucky's DUI law. The sponsor of the bill, then Sen. Henry Lackey, told Wartman that he didn't know why. "I don't remember anyone bringing that issue up," said Lackey, now deputy state aviation commissioner. Jon Fleischaker, attorney for the Kentucky Press Association, told Wartman, "Although I don't know for certain, my guess is it was done out of some misguided sense of privacy and some concern for how the thing could be used." He said the law could be challenged on constitutional grounds if a recording is used in a case. "Let's say I'm a defendant who is wrongfully accused and I want to show the public the tape," he said. "Why shouldn't I be able to do that?"

Electronic metadata are open, federal judge rules

"For the first time, a federal court has ruled that metadata -- information related to the history, tracking or management of an electronic document -- must be released if requested under the Freedom of Information Act," reports Christine Beckett of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled Monday in the case of National Day Laborer Organizing Network v. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. The labor group requested records in electronic form from ICE. "After significant delay, the agency provided the records, but did so by putting the them into a large, unsearchable PDF that lacked distinction within and lacked metadata," Beckett reports.

Scheindlin said that failed to meet the requirements of FOIA because the data were unusable and undefined. "There was no way to discern the beginning and end of individual records," Beckett explains. The judge said ICE's arguments were "lame."

Metadata are essential to using electronic records because they show "the government is not hiding anything," said Sunita Patel, attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, co-counsel and co-plaintiff in the suit. "It goes to the heart of FOIA."

The judge said metadata should be specifically requested, but ruled that because the labor group asked for electronic records in "native format," the original electronic format that contains metadata, that was sufficient to require ICE to provide the metadata.

She "conceded that not all metadata may fall under FOIA's 'readily producible' standard, noting that, in some circumstances, producing all metadata could be too burdensome for an agency," Beckett reports. "The court said the determination of what metadata must be produced should be conducted on a case-by-case basis, and depend upon the type of electronic record requested and how the agency maintains its records." The U.S. attorney handling the case declined to say if an appeal will follow. (Read more)

Minton orders accounting of sealed cases

Chief Justice John Minton Jr. has ordered all circuit court clerks and judges in Kentucky to make public at least the case numbers and names of parties in thousands of sealed court cases, according to The Courier-Journal.

The Louisville newspaper said the action came after it asked for an accounting of 3,600 cases sealed from public view over the past decade. Minton sent an email to clerks and judges reminding them that sealing court cases should be done rarely and "only for compelling reasons," and that the existence of such cases should never be hidden from the public.

Minton told the newspaper that in recent years, after Kentucky adopted new computer technology, cases that were sealed were moved to the "confidential division," and even the case numbers and participants were hidden. That was a mistake, he said, and the Kentucky Department of Technology would begin immediately change the programming involved. Clerks will also be asked to "make adjustments to previously sealed cases," the paper quoted Minton as saying.

The change will not open the sealed cases, but will reveal docket numbers and parties involved. Jon Fleischaker, who represents the Kentucky Press Association, The Courier-Journal and some other news outlets, said Minton's order was a step toward more transparency.