Supreme Court Says Out Of State Residents Have No Constitutional Right To Virginia's FOIA Law
from the really-now? dept
A few months back, I mentioned that we had joined in an amicus brief in a challenge to Virginia's freedom of information act (FOIA) law, which limited the ability of non-Virginia residents to make use of the law. In particular, we were extra concerned about how the law seemed to treat different types of requests in different ways -- such as allowing out of state newspapers to file FOIA requests, but not allowing other publications like blogs to file. We ended up joining with a large number of publications and other interested parties in asking the Supreme Court to declare the limitations in Virginia's law unconstitutional.On Monday, the Supreme Court went the other way, saying that the law and its restrictions are legal, and that the Constitution does not guarantee a right to FOIA requests. It also basically said that these restrictions weren't that big of a deal. That seems unfortunate, given how important transparency is to good governance, and how key FOIA requests have been in increasing transparency. Just because you don't live in a state, it doesn't mean that you can't help investigate and report on happenings in that state.
As someone who has filed regional and federal FOIA requests for quite some time now, such restrictions are somewhat worrisome. Of course, where the state of Virginia and the Supreme Court seek to hoard such information from out of state requests, others are already working on ways to tackle the problem. Muckrock, the platform for filing FOIA requests (who was a part of the coalition on the amicus brief) has already started building a list of volunteers in each state (especially in Virginia and the six other states with similar laws) to file requests locally in that state standing in for those out of state. They're looking for more volunteers, so if you're interested, click that link and sign up.
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Filed Under: foia, freedom of information act, limitations, supreme court, virginia
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bloggers versus journalists
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Re: bloggers versus journalists
He does do a degree of journalism to back up his opinion(which any opinion writer worth reading does) but that's not the same thing as being a journalist.
I've explained this many times but you refuse to understand it just so you can push your own agenda
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Re: Re: bloggers versus journalists
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Re: Re: bloggers versus journalists
Mike does not.
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Re: Re: Re: bloggers versus journalists
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Re: Re: Re: bloggers versus journalists
Quite the sense of humor you got there.
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Re: Re: Re: bloggers versus journalists
Hmmm. No.
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Re: Re: Re: bloggers versus journalists
But then there's been blatant corruption of that within the British media, and I have little reason to doubt that the rot goes much further (see, for example, Fox "News").
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Re: Re: Re: bloggers versus journalists
Mike does not."
And you do, girl?
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Re: Re: bloggers versus journalists
Right. And that in and of itself makes me give more weight to what I read at Techdirt over MSM.
MSM gives me selected "facts" (usually only from one side of an issue) and expects me to believe it's the whole truth.
With Techdirt I get an opinion, backed up with facts to explain how the opinion was reached without trying to hide the fact that there is always another side to every issue.
Personally, I prefer to be treated as someone who can make up their own mind, instead of a mindless dolt that needs to be told how to think by MSM.
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Re: bloggers versus journalists
Re-read the article, in particular the bit at the end where Mike talks about how they're by-passing this ruling using a simple method (in-state volunteers). If it's that simple to get round and people feel the need to get round it. I'd suggest that the judge made the wrong call and is simply making more work for his local government ie wasting taxpayer money for no benefit.
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If request the information I've got to be allowed to publish my analysis of it for which I'd need to show my data. You can hardly prevent people from writing quick reports to cover themselves whilst sharing.
tl:dr you can't stop the signal.
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Re: Re: Re: bloggers versus journalists
How would anyone be deceived? If the volunteer lives in the state, how is that deceitful in any way, shape or form?
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Re: Re: Re: bloggers versus journalists
> the long run, the state is likely to take
> action against people who attempt to deceive them.
How is it an attempt to deceive? They're declaring themselves in-state residents (true) and they're making a legitimate request (true).
What 'action' can the state take against anyone who shares information gleaned from a FOIA response? That's the whole *purpose* of the FOIA law in the first place-- for citizens to be able to access their government's documents and share that information.
And while the Supreme Court may have upheld restrictions on who may *file* a state FOIA request, any attempt to procecute someone for sharing that information with an out of state resident or simply putting it on the internet would be bright-line violation of the 1st Amendment.
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These kinds of judgments seem to be the new rage
This judgment reminds me of this other recent one. Both of them are trivial to tracelessly workaround.
In the first-sale rights ruling, the judge ruled that it's perfectly OK to sell your digital download along with the storage media to which you originally saved. Unfortunately, it is trivial, when you decide to resell your content, to copy the file or files you want to sell to any sufficiently old flash drive or card, in such a way that the resulting media is indistinguishable from the result of having downloaded those files directly to the media.
Hey, suddenly all those old, relatively-tiny-capacity flash drives will become useful again!
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The logic goes if you don't live in Virginia you can't possibly care about what goes on or be able to make a product based on that information. That is pants-on-head retarded.
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You clearly did not read the opinion. That's not what the Court said.
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1) masnick is not a journalist
2) masnick has no idea about the constitution or the law in general.
2a) no one cares about Masnicks Amicus briefs, or if they even look at it will go the opposite to what he says.
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Re: Re:
2) and he often admits he isn't sure about some law issues and takes his conclusions and form his opinions after consulting with some of his contacts that are into the subject. Your point?
3) If no one cared you wouldn't be paid by those who feel annoyed by this blog to troll here (assuming you aren't doing it personally).
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Doesn't seem to stop you, girl.
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1. Know that you're standing on a shaky ground but refuse to acknowledge it (the "la la la can't hear you" syndrome)
2. Fear the writer for the message (s)he brings, cos you know his/her writings/message will obliterate your worldview (primal survival instinct)
Given that, I'm so close to use the "T" word as comparison to you.
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Even though we have all those judges to ensure that constitutional violations do not slip by the courts it does not failure proof the process.
It's always a possiblity that the court is wrong in the interpretation
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I don't know about you guys, but I wouldn't want someone who isn't a resident of my state, getting hold of any of my documents because I consider it an invasion of my privacy.
I simply blame the media for abusing FOIA requests simply because they have this sense of "entitlement". While FOIA requests shouldn't be impeded where it concerns public officials, since they are elected into office, I think the media tends to abuse the FOIA simply because they feel it is their right.
Personally, I think Congress and States need to put more limits regarding FOIA requests because it simply has become more of a problem then a solution.
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This doesn't make you any safer it just makes (a little) more work for those investigating stories. For a company of reasonable size opening a branch in a handful of states isn't going to be an issue.
The only people who are really going to be hindered by this are blogs who don't have the support and contacts that techdirt does. I don't think they are a problem.
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> in a handful of states isn't going to be an issue.
They don't even have to open a branch. All they have to do is find an employee or someone they know who has friends or relatives in that state and have them file the request. Give them a Best Buy gift certificate for their time or something.
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The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. John Gilmore
So basically this Supreme Court decision achieves nothing really except making it a tad more annoying to file for State FOIA requests making it mandatory for people to organize in networks focused on scrutinizing the Govt.
I say it's actually a huge win for awareness. And the trollie trolls that posted before me are left looking like clowns ;)
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Of course its an attempt to bypass the stupid law. But how will it fail? Once the information is obtained from a FOIA by a resident of that state, they can publish or share it with others. Any attempt to stop the dissemination of information by that resident would quickly be struck down.
being hit with violating privacy
The government is not entitled to privacy.
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And seriously, there's no false FOIA request. There's just FOIA requests. If I submitted one then I want some info. It's not up to ANYBODY arbitrarily evaluate if it's "false". That's a quite sick concept you have there.
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To bad the bastards pick and choose what to support regarding it.
I see nothing bad about locals doing the bidding of out of staters, a few of the places. I have lived doing the bidding of out of staters would at best get you shunned. But I see no problem with it.
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fyi...
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It was a good decision by the court. Mike should stick to writing fiction.
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It was a good decision by the court. Mike should stick to writing fiction.
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FOIA�s
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