Category Archives: Public records

The One-Way Mirror: Enhancing Participation and Securing Privacy for Government 2.0

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“The One-Way Mirror: Enhancing Participation and Securing Privacy for Government 2.0″

Danielle Keats Citron
University of Maryland School of Law

Maryland Legal Scholarship Network RPS
University of Maryland – School of Law

George Washington Law Review, Vol. 78, 2010
University of Maryland Legal Studies Research, 2009-41

Abstract:     
The public can now “friend” the White House and scores of agencies on social networks, virtual worlds, and video-sharing sites. The Obama Administration sees this trend as crucial to enhancing governmental transparency, public participation, and collaboration. As the President has underscored, government needs to tap into the public’s expertise because it doesn’t have all of the answers. To be sure, Government 2.0 might improve civic engagement. But it also might produce privacy vulnerabilities because agencies often gain access to individuals’ social network profiles, photographs, videos, and contact lists when interacting with individuals online. Little would prevent agencies from using and sharing individuals’ social media data for more than policymaking, including law enforcement, immigration, tax, and benefits matters. Although people may be prepared to share their views on health care and the environment with agencies and executive departments, they may be dismayed to learn that such policy collaborations carry a risk of government surveillance. This essay argues that government should refrain from accessing individuals’ social media data on Government 2.0 sites. Agencies should treat these sites as one-way mirrors, where individuals can see government’s activities and engage in policy discussions but where government cannot use, collect, or distribute individuals’ social media information. A “one-way mirror” policy would facilitate democratic discourse, enhance government accountability, and protect privacy.

Source:  LSN Information Privacy Law Vol. 2 No. 41,  11/09/2009

Brief Fight Likely to End in Compromise

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From tomorrow’s (Friday’s) San Francisco Recorder:

Brief Fight Likely to End in Compromise
The Recorder

By Mike McKee

October 30, 2009

The [California] Supreme Court sounds willing to end its practice of shipping briefs from all the state’s appellate cases to Westlaw and LexisNexis, which charge for them. An Irvine lawyer [Edmond Connor] saw a copyright problem…

Some more from the article:

…

‘Connor, who claims court briefs are lawyers’ copyrighted property, wrote again last Friday, urging the court to at least amend Rule of Court 8.212 — which requires lawyers to file either one electronic copy or four hard copies of their briefs with the high court — to instead require only one paper copy.

“Litigants will not have to incur the needless time and expense,” he wrote, “of providing the court with extra copies of briefs that the court simply discards — or gives away to vendors.”

…

Judicial Information Management in an Electronic Age: Old Standards, New Challenges

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“Judicial Information Management in an Electronic Age: Old Standards, New Challenges”

Federal Courts Law Review, Forthcoming

PETER A. WINN, University of Washington School of Law

Under well established law, information in court records is open to the public, but it may be sealed upon a fact-based showing either that the information is not a matter of legitimate public concern or is sufficiently sensitive to need such protection. Under the former paper-based court record system, however, routine violations of these publcity standards were widely tolerated. At the same time, the practical obscurity of paper provided a default privacy benefit for negligently unsealed sensitive information. With the introduction of electonic filing, old improper sealing practices are now increasingly being exposed and criticised; while the dealth of practical obscurity has caused individuals with sensitive information in court files, to be increasingly exposed to harm. This article argues that restoring an appropriate homeostasis to the judicial information eco-system, where legitimate privacy and publicity interests are both protected, does not require replacing established common law standards; but it will require the adoption of new legal procedures, better use of information technologies, and more careful training of judges and lawyers. Ultimately, to properly achieve this goal, the existing common law adversarial system of information mangement will need to be supplemented by a new administrative model.

Source:  LSN Information Privacy Law Vol. 2 No. 34,  10/07/2009

In Defense of Data: Information and the Costs of Privacy

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“In Defense of Data: Information and the Costs of Privacy”

Technology Policy Institute Working Paper
Emory Law and Economics Research Paper

THOMAS M. LENARD, Technology Policy Institute

PAUL H. RUBIN, Emory University – Department of Economics, Emory University – School of Law

The commercial use of information on the Internet has produced substantial benefits for consumers. But, as the use of information online has increased, so have concerns about privacy. In this paper we argue that acting on those concerns would be counterproductive. Far from a ‘free lunch,’ more privacy implies less information available for producing benefits for consumers, including targeted advertising and the valuable web services it supports, e.g. search engines, email, and social networks. Concerns about privacy may also be misguided. Most data collected about individuals is anonymous, and reducing legitimate uses of online information is not likely to reduce identity theft. Firms appear to be responsive to consumers’ privacy preferences, which also points to a properly functioning market. Our analysis suggests that proposals to restrict the amount of information available would not yield net benefits for consumers.

 

Source:  LSN Information Privacy Law Vol. 2 No. 24,  08/11/2009

Citability – Help Solve Link Rot…

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We have lamented here about the headaches that link rot causes…Who doesn’t get annoyed by the web link that no longer works?

But, the folks at Citability.org are trying to do something about it.

Their basic goal is very simple and compelling: to have the government create advanced permalinks on a paragraph level to all public government documents.

The beauty of a permalink is quite obvious; and, any fan of public-domain, vendor neutral citation should be pleased by the paragraph level specificity of these links.

Here is an example and explanation  from their site:

“Permalinks are human-readable URLs with timestamps, document ID, and an an anchor to the section/paragraph:
Example: http://archive.senate.gov/20090502082437/bills/SB1234#S1b1Bii.  The example would point to section 1, subsection b, chapter 1, paragraph B, clause ii in SB 1234 on May 2, 2009 at 8:26:16 am UTC”

If you are interested in lending your support, visit their site.  Also, visit http://citability.pbworks.com if you would like to help promote or give feedback on some of the standards that they are suggesting.

Copyright, Technology, and Access to the Law: An Opinionated Primer

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“Copyright, Technology, and Access to the Law: An Opinionated Primer”


NYLS Legal Studies Research Paper No. 08/09-1

JAMES GRIMMELMANN, New York Law School

Recently, the state of Oregon has used copyright law to threaten people who were publishing its laws online. Can they really do that?

More to the point, why would they? This essay will put the Oregon fracas in historical context, and explain the public policies at stake. Ultimately, it’ll try to convince you that Oregon’s demands, while wrong, aren’t unprecedented. People have been claiming copyright in the law for a long time, and at times they’ve been able to make a halfway convincing case for it. While there are good answers to these arguments, they’re not always the first ones that come to hand. It’s really only the arrival of the Internet that genuinely puts the long-standing goal of free and unencumbered access to the law within our grasp.

This essay, written for nonlawyers and people interested in contemporary debates over access to the law, explains what’s at stake in the Oregon dispute, how people have tried such things before, the role of new technologies in improving legal publishing, what the law has to say about it, and where we ought to go from here.

 

Source:  LSN Legal Information & Technology Vol. 1 No. 8,  04/08/2009

Court-System Transparency

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Here’s a new law review article of note:

Lynn M. LoPucki, “Court-System Transparency,” 94 Iowa Law Review 481-538 (February 2009).

ABSTRACT: Over the past decade, the federal courts became the world’s most transparent court system by switching from paper to electronic filing, resolving daunting privacy problems, and posting their case files on the Internet. Now they are embarking on a second, equally important transformation–the use of relational forms from which court data can be extracted automatically. This Article describes the technology and seeks to project and evaluate the effects of that second transformation.

If it occurs, the second transformation would create millions of windows into the courts at virtually no cost to the government. Policymakers, litigants, and the public would be able to see and understand the patterns of judicial decisionmaking–who wins what and how often. That would provide policy makers the feedback needed to fine tune the system, lawyers the ability to predict the outcomes of their cases, and the public the ability to see what courts actually do. All could also see whether the precautions they take for supposed legal reasons are the right ones.

Opponents argue that court-record transparency (1) would expose parties and witnesses to the risk of identity theft and other harms, (2) would invade privacy by making previously-difficult-to-obtain public-record information about individuals readily available, and (3) would pressure judges in ways that deprive them of judicial independence. This Article argues that none of those objections is well-founded.

Carl Malamud’s campaign and his many Stanford Law School friends

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From Washington Internet Daily, “Agencies,” March 02, 2009 Monday, Vol. 10 No. 39:

. . . Carl Malamud, pushing state legislatures to renounce any claimed copyright interests in legal codes and make them freely available as searchable databases (WID June 20 p7), has support from big names in free-culture and open-government circles. They include [SLS professor] Larry Lessig, founder of Creative Commons, tech publisher Tim O’Reilly, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle, Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer [SLS alumnus and lecturer] Fred von Lohmann, Columbia University law professor Tim Wu and University of California at Berkeley law professor Pamela Samuelson. Malamud’s model, described on his campaign site at YesWeScan.org, is Augustus Giegengack. The printer campaigned his way to becoming U.S. Public Printer by getting endorsement letters from Rotary Clubs and hand-delivering them to the Franklin Roosevelt White House. Malamud said the GPO should lead the effort to make all U.S. primary legal materials available online, create more materials for the public domain that can be re- mixed by users, “reboot” the .gov domain by “installing a cloud” and upgrading its video
capabilities, and work more closely with libraries.

Carl is our hero.  And we (as in librarians) are his.  Carl has been a guest speaker at our Advanced Legal Research class and has made many comments about the role of law librarians in liberating legal information, and he spoke at last summer’s AALL meeting in Portland too.

Wired: Rogue Archivist Campaigns to Be Obama’s Printer

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New article in Wired  by Ryan Singel about the “Yes We Scan” campaign.

Singel writes:

“But now, Malamud is campaigning to be The Man.

Or, more accurately, the chief printer for The Man.”

…

“Given Malamud’s ability to wear down government bureaucracies, the Obama administration might do well to save themselves the trouble. Malamud will be the nation’s public printer — it’s just a question of whether he’ll be rogue or legit.”