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Every day, more than 100 million items are posted to Sina Weibo, the microblogging service sometimes called "China's Twitter". And every day, teams of censors comb through the posts in search of anything that changes what the government likes to call a "harmonious society."
For the past five months, ProPublica has been quietly watching the watchers by using software to monitor 100 Weibo accounts. Every post containing an image is monitored to see if it is deleted. Of nearly 80,000 posts, about 5 percent, or 4,200 posts, were deleted by censors.
ProPublica launched an interactive feature that allows readers to see and understand the images that censors consider too sensitive for Chinese eyes. More information on how they did the story can be found here: http://www.propublica.org/article/how-we-observed-censorship-on-sina-weibo.
International Business Times reported earlier today that the Dept. of Veterans Affairs had stopped releasing data on injured veterans involved in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Internet Archive has released an experimental library of television news clips covering revelations about the National Security Agency's surveillance programs. The library allows users to search over 700 clips dating back from 2009. The library is searchable by transcripts, speakers, or date.
It is currently only accessible via Chrome and Safari browsers. Clips may also be borrowed in DVD format for up to 30 days.
The Committee to Protect Journalists released a report today titled The Obama Administration and the Press, stating that “electronic surveillance programs deter government sources from speaking to journalists.”
President Barack Obama pledged open government as he entered office, but his administration has fallen far short of those promises, according to CPJ. Since 2009, six government employees and two contractors have been subjects of criminal prosecutions under the 1917 Espionage Act, compared to three in all previous administrations. Also, the Justice Department engaged in direct surveillance of the press by issuing subpoenas for reporters’ phone logs and emails.
Compounding journalists' concerns, according to the report, is the recently revealed extensive surveillance of digital data and phone records by the National Security Administration.
“I think we have a real problem,” New York Times national security reporter Scott Shane told CPJ. “Most people are deterred by those leaks prosecutions. They’re scared to death. There’s a gray zone between classified and unclassified information, and most sources were in that gray zone. Sources are now afraid to enter that gray zone.”
The report was authored primarily by Leonard Downie Jr., an IRE founder and board member, vice president at large and former executive editor of The Washington Post, and the Weil Family Professor of Journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Previously, Downie moderated a panel on the government’s war on leaks at the 2013 IRE Conference in San Antonio: “The Obama administration’s war on leaks is by far the most aggressive that I’ve seen since the Nixon administration, and I go back that far,” he said at the time. The panel included:
Listen to their discussion of why such unprecedented efforts against leaks are happening now, what role journalists play in it, and what’s to be done to keep communications secure and protect sources. Download the audio.
Journalists have been searching for alternative resources after the government shutdown caused many online databases to go down and government offices to close as employees went on furlough. For more information about how the shutdown is affecting news coverage, see the stories below.
For information on closed FOIA offices:
Both the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and MuckRock are keeping lists of closed FOIA offices. The FOIA blog is posting regular updates related to any effects of the government shutdown.
How journalists are working around the problem...for now:
Many are using alternative sources, but as investigations continue or new projects begin, resources may not be available. The Sunlight Foundation recommends ways to avoid problems in case of another loss of access to government data.
What qualifies as "essential" government functions:
Military operations and transportation and weather services are among some of the essential programs that will continue operating. Regulations and inspections groups are among those that will continue to work with fewer staff.
How to find government data from alternative sources:
The Pew Center has a list of all data resources currently offline. IRE, the Reynold's National Center for Business Journalism, and Investigative News Network all have alternative services for accessing government data.
Covering the shutdown:
We reported yesterday that many government agencies had shut off access to their online data services, and that the NICAR database library was a good source for finding government data during the shutdown.
Poynter today has an interesting post on the challenges the shutdown has caused for data journalists. If you want more background, the Sunlight Foundation explained what happens to a .gov site during a shutdown. The Donald W. Reynolds Business Journalism center has a list of some sources that are available, including linkbacks to NICAR data.
But some agencies have closed and others haven't. What's available during a shutdown? We're trying to track just that, and we need your help.
If the agency website is closed off, can that information still be found elsewhere? We're keeping track of what's available, what's not, and what alternative sources exist for government data, like Census Reporter or Bulk Resource, for instance. We're crowdsourcing this effort: We'll be adding what we know to the Google Spreadsheet we've started below, linked here. If you have some information on what's available and where, please add it to the list. Also, if you know of other information we should be tracking, or other fields we should add to this spreadsheet, let us know.
In late 2011 or early 2012, I received a phone call that set off a nearly two-year fight over a government record.
The caller, who wished to remain anonymous, had browsed the Huron School District legal announcements printed in the Classifieds section of The Daily Plainsman, a newspaper published in Huron, S.D. The tipster said the legals contained a long list of recent bills paid by the district. Buried within that list was a payment of nearly $11,000 to an ex-superintendent. Would The Daily Republic, the tipster wondered, be willing to investigate why the district was still paying an ex-employee?
I assigned a reporter to look into it. District officials acknowledged they had been paying former superintendent Ross Opsal but declined to divulge anything beyond the amounts published in the legals. They said the terms of the payments were part of a sealed agreement. I was not satisfied with that answer but sensed help was on the way in the form of state legislation.
The legislation was not directly connected to our fight but was signed by the governor only seven days after our first story on the Huron situation published. The legislation clarified that “any current or prior contract with any public employee and any related document that specifies the consideration to be paid to the employee” is a public record.
After the new law took effect, I made a new request to the Huron School District for a copy of the secret agreement. With a new refusal in hand, I filed an appeal with the South Dakota Office of Hearing Examiners. That office is designated by state law as the arbiter of open-records disputes.
The process amounted to nothing more than my written appeal, using forms and procedures spelled out in state law, followed by a written response from the Huron School District’s lawyer, and then a couple of additional emails back and forth and a lot of inquiries by me about when a decision might finally be issued. It took six months to get the decision; nevertheless, the hearing examiner who studied the appeal sided with The Daily Republic and, in March, determined that the secret Huron agreement was a public record.
Instead of surrendering the record, the school district and its attorney appealed to circuit court. They didn’t have any better luck in that setting, where we were joined in our defense of the hearing examiner’s ruling by the South Dakota Newspaper Association and its attorney. In August, the judge in the case affirmed the hearing examiner’s earlier decision and ruled that the Huron document is an open record. The district could have appealed to the South Dakota Supreme Court, but did not.
The evening of Sept. 9 brought the first Huron Board of Education meeting since the judge’s ruling, and the board voted to open the document and read it aloud. It revealed -- cue the drum roll -- not much of anything. It basically confirmed that money was paid to Opsal as part of an agreement that ended his employment.
The document did not contain the only information we really want, which is a clear explanation of why Opsal’s employment ended so abruptly before he was halfway through a three-year contract, and why the school board felt compelled -- in exchange for Opsal’s departure -- to make monthly payments to him that we now know stretched for about 15 months and totaled about $175,000.
My guess is that the school board members wanted to part ways with Opsal, but the only way they could do it -- perhaps because of resistance from Opsal, who was under contract -- was to pay Opsal to go away.
Such an arrangement is likely to invite scrutiny from taxpayers. It’s no wonder, then, that the Huron Board of Education went behind closed doors to concoct the Opsal agreement in an “executive session” -- a euphemism for a closed-door, non-public meeting -- and then proclaimed it forever sealed. The board members and their attorney didn’t want the public to know what they did. And they would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for those darn newspaper legals they had to publish, and that pesky tipster, and that annoyingly persistent newspaper.
That’s my theory, anyway. We may never know the whole truth, because the Huron Board of Education has never come forth with all of it.
But at least we’ve shown one government board that it can’t go behind closed doors, arrange a secret deal, and never have to reveal the resulting contract. We showed our readers, with the efforts of our small newspaper in our small town, that they deserve to know what their government is doing and that they should fight for that knowledge.
Seth Tupper is the editor of The Daily Republic, an 11,500-circulation, six-day daily newspaper in Mitchell, S.D. He is the president of the South Dakota Newspaper Association’s First Amendment Committee and in 2012 was a member of Gov. Dennis Daugaard’s Open Government Task Force.
Minority members of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee released a report on Sept. 9, 2013 claiming that the EPA has "a dismal history of competently and timely responding to FOIA requests," has failed to adequately train staff members on FOIA policies, has shown bias in deciding to honor fee waiver requests, and has misused email accounts.
Some of the members of the committee filing the report receive their largest campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry and from agribusiness. Environmental groups have also filed complaints during this time, but some states claim these legal actions were coordinated by the EPA to change regulations.
Read the report below:
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Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s administration had preached transparency, according to the Lansing State Journal, but is charging exorbitant amounts for access to state contract records.
The Lansing State Journal sought contracts from the Michigan Department of Technology, Management & Budget, the repository for 1,200 contracts worth $32 billion between the state and outside vendors. The Journal filed a freedom of information request to it, the Michigan Economic Development Corp. and the state lottery bureau for contracts. Reporter Kristen M. Daum now writes that Development Corp. officials estimated a cost of $1,7000 just to allow a reporter to review the contracts, and the Department of Technology, Management & Budget estimated tens of thousands of dollars to make the information available for review.
Read more at the Lansing State Journal …
Journalists from an online news service in Hawaii have started a public service law center to help citizen’s navigate the state’s open record laws.
Honolulu-based Civil Beat reports that Hawaii has decent public information laws, but in practice state and county government fail to follow and enforce the law. Patti Epler of Civil Beat describes the law as such:
“We've found that it's common for agencies to routinely reject — without good reason — requests for reports, documents and other information that should be readily available. They sometimes simply ignore legitimate inquiries from the press and the public or stall for months. Their redactions can black out whole pages.”
The state has an Office of Information Practices that helps requesters with appeals, but it remains two years behind on its cases and other agencies routinely ignore its opinions.
Last week, Civil Beat announced the creation of a new organization to help citizens through such requests: The Civil Beat Law Center for the Public Interest. Funded by the Hawaii Community Foundation and Pierre and Pamela Omidyar Ohana Fund, the center lawyers will provide advice on accessing government information to news media and citizens at no charge.
Civil Beat describes the center as an independent organization that shares the news site’s name and “our mission of encouraging government transparency through investigative and watchdog reporting, and the center's work is a natural extension of that goal.”
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