Open government

An emerging debate about whether elected officials violate people's free speech rights by blocking them on social media is spreading across the US as groups sue or warn politicians to stop the practice.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued Gov Paul LePage (R-ME) and sent warning letters to Utah's congressional delegation. It followed recent lawsuits against the governors of Maryland and Kentucky and President Donald Trump. Politicians at all levels increasingly embrace social media to discuss government business, sometimes at the expense of traditional town halls or in-person meetings. "People turn to social media because they see their elected officials as being available there and they're hungry for opportunities to express their opinions and share feedback," said Anna Thomas, spokeswoman for the ACLU of Utah. "That includes people who disagree with public officials." Most of the officials targeted so far — all Republicans — say they are not violating free speech but policing social media pages to get rid of people who post hateful, violent, obscene or abusive messages.

After lagging behind other courts for years, the Supreme Court is finally catching up on a key technological feature that will be a boon to researchers, lawyers and analysts of all kinds. It's moving to adopt electronic filing. The change will allow the public to access legal filings for all future cases — free of charge. Beginning Nov 13, the court will require “parties who are represented by counsel” to upload digital copies of their paper submissions. Parties representing themselves will have their filings uploaded by the court's staff. All those submissions will then be entered into an online docket for each case, and they will be accessible from the court's homepage. The move brings the Supreme Court fully into the Internet age.

[Commentary] President Donald Trump and his loyalists potentially find the release of nearly any information about what they’re doing to be offensive, no matter how mundane. Often this is couched in the use of the word “leaks.” There are real leaks in the White House, and information has been provided to the news media that is unusually sensitive in nature. There are also more anodyne leaks of the palace-intrigue variety. And then there are things that are called leaks but which aren’t. President Trump and his core allies want you to know only what President Trump wants you to know. Everything else is leaks or “fake news.” Or, somehow, both.

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is what enables regular people to pester powerful federal agencies into handing over information about what they’ve been up to. FOIA’s website calls it “the law that keeps citizens in the know about their government.” It’s hardly surprising then that government accountability groups balked when, in early April, House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) directed multiple agencies under his committee’s jurisdiction to start classifying all communications with the committee as official “congressional records” not subject to FOIA.

Probably best to back up a tick: FOIA applies only to executive agency records. Congressional records are a different creature entirely (as are presidential records), enjoying greater privacy protections. But not every document that has been created by or sent to Congress qualifies as a congressional record. Basically, if anyone at an agency is interacting with the finance committee in any way, Chairman Hensarling wants to make sure that you can’t find out any details about it. You can see how this might not be great in terms of promoting government accountability.

Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR) criticized the Federal Communications Commission for failing to turn over its internal analysis of the DDoS attacks that hit the FCC's public comment system.

The FCC declined to provide its analysis of the attacks to Gizmodo, which had filed a Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request for a copy of all records related to the FCC analysis "that concluded a DDoS attack had taken place." The FCC declined the request, saying that its initial analysis on the day of the attack "did not result in written documentation." “If the FCC did suffer a DDoS attack and yet created no written materials about it, that would be deeply irresponsible and cast doubt on how the FCC could possibly prevent future attacks," said Sen Wyden. "On the other hand, if FCC is playing word games to avoid responding to FoIA requests, it would clearly violate Chairman Ajit Pai’s pledge to increase transparency at the FCC.” Sen Wyden also said that the FCC's response to the FoIA request raised "legitimate questions about whether the agency is being truthful when it claims a DDoS attack knocked its commenting system offline.”

FCC Chairman Pai’s response: “The FCC has provided a written response to Congress detailing the attack, and we have never said that we have no written materials about it. Rather, the documents that were not produced in response to the FOIA request cannot be provided, among other reasons, because of security and privacy concerns.”

In the US Digital Serivces' annual report to Congress, Acting Administrator Matt Cutts—the Google transplant responsible for Gmail's spam filter—outlined the team's current priorities, many of which were established under President Barack Obama. The team reports to the Office of Management and Budget's acting deputy director and is now part of the American Technology Council, a convocation of prominent business leaders that President Donald Trump taps for advice on federal problems. USDS also works with the White House Office of American Innovation, a new team led by Jared Kushner aiming to modernize government technology, according to Cutts.

Despite stark differences between the two administrations' broader priorities—some experts predicted Trump would keep the tech teams but assign them to new projects—USDS appears to be continuing the progress it made under Obama. For instance, Kushner has listed the VA's internal technology as one of the Office of American Innovation's top priorities, and USDS has been working on various VA projects for years, the report noted. A USDS team built and deployed a system that could process claims for disability compensation in 2016, and piloted a new tool that would let lawyers and judges review evidence from those claims in April. It also helped launch Vets.gov, an online portal consolidating the thousands of federal benefit sites for veterans, in 2015; in November USDS added a check claim status tool, applications for education benefits, and other new features. USDS is still collaborating with the U.S. Citizenship and Innovation Services to digitize the immigration paperwork processing system, the report said.

On June 28, the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity issued a letter requesting that states provide publicly available voter data as permitted under their state laws. At present, 20 states have agreed to provide the publicly available information requested by the Commission and another 16 states are reviewing which information can be released under their state laws. In all, 36 states have either agreed or are considering participating with the Commission's work to ensure the integrity of the American electoral system. While there are news reports that 44 states have "refused" to provide voter information to the Commission, these reports are patently false, more "fake news". At present, only 14 states and the District of Columbia have refused the Commission's request for publicly available voter information. Despite media distortions and obstruction by a handful of state politicians, this bipartisan commission on election integrity will continue its work to gather the facts through public records requests to ensure the integrity of each American's vote because the public has a right to know.

[Kris Kobach (R-KS) is Kansas Secretary of State and Vice Chair of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity]

Officials in nearly every state say they cannot or will not turn over all of the voter data President Trump’s voting commission is seeking, dealing what could be a serious blow to Trump’s attempts to bolster his claims that widespread fraud cost him the popular vote in November.

The commission’s request for a massive amount of state-level data last week included asking for all publicly available information about voter rolls in the states, such as names of all registrants, addresses, dates of birth, partial Social Security numbers and other data. It immediately encountered criticism and opposition, with some saying it could lead to an invasion of privacy and others worrying about voter suppression. The states that won’t provide all of their voter data grew to a group of at least 44 by Wednesday, including some, such as California and Virginia, that said they would provide nothing to the commission. Others said they are hindered by state laws governing what voter information can be made public but will provide what they can.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have asked for all the surveillance warrants the FBI asked for from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court as part of the FBI's investigation into Russian campaign interference, including possible collusion with the campaign of Donald Trump.

The top Republicans cited stories by both the BBC and CNN, the latter of which President Trump continues to brand as fake news. The request by the senators was based on news reports that the Justice Department had asked the court for authority to monitor members of the Trump presidential campaign—which the court denied, advising the FBI to narrow its focus. They said they want copies of both classified and non-classified.

The OPEN Government Data Act (S 760) would direct federal agencies to publish all data they collect in an open format that can be used by any computer. Under the bill, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) would establish an inventory of all federal data sets and would direct the General Services Administration (GSA) to maintain an online interface for all such data. The bill also would require the Government Accountability Office (GAO), OMB, and Chief Information Officers at each federal agency to report to the Congress about this effort.

Information from the General Services Administration and selected agencies suggest that most of the provisions of the bill would codify Executive Order 13642 and other executive branch policies that set the framework for agencies to promote openness and interoperability in information management. That executive order requires agencies to standardize data sets and to make them publicly available. A website (www.data.gov) has been established to share this government information with the general public. However, CBO expects that implementing S. 760 would cost about $2 million over the 2018-2021 period, for additional administrative and reporting costs for GSA and other agencies and to implement the new reporting requirements for GAO; such spending would be subject to the availability of appropriated funds.