San Diegans are paying to defend a politician who claims San Diegans have no right to obtain records

You think that just because you're paying the lawyer, that means he's acting in your interest?

No, public entity lawyers protect public officials.  They rarely seek to protect the public.  (Mike Aguirre was an exception to this rule.  He believed he represented the people of San Diego.)

We elected them--and now we're paying for their efforts to keep us ignorant of what's going on.

Both Voice of San Diego and UT-San Diego  are covering the topic:

Morning Report: What to Watch for in Big PD Misconduct Deal

By: Seth Hall 

Voice of San Diego

August 1, 2014 

...San Diegans are now in the position of paying to defend a politician who claims San Diegans have no right to obtain the records of public business he has conducted over his personal devices and accounts.

Goldsmith’s office recently coughed up around 1,000 emails relating to city business that went to his personal account, but noted he wasn’t legally required to do so. 

Secret Public Records

On the topic of the public’s interest, the Public Utility Commission decided to withhold an expert report on what went wrong at the San Onofre nuclear power plant. Full disclosure of that report wouldn’t be in the public’s best interest either, according to a PUC attorney.

Shortly after denying the request to release the report in defense of the public’s best interest, the PUC released the report...

 The issue of concealing public business in private emails will be addressed by the California Supreme Court in  Smith v. City of San Jose (March 19, 2013, No. 1-09-CV-150427).

State's high court takes email case

Justices will decide whether officials can keep public business secret by using personal devices

By Ashly McGlone

UT-San Diego

 June 30, 2014

The California Supreme Court will review a lower court ruling that kept otherwise public records out of public hands if they were sent using private email accounts and devices.

The San Jose case involves a resident who asked to see emails and texts of City Council members but was rejected because the communication took place on personal devices and accounts. It’s garnering statewide interest as electronic devices make it possible for public officials to handle more public business outside the usual communications systems...

Update: Google resists a recent court decision in Europe ordering Google to remove results from Internet searches

UPDATE: GOOGLE REVERSES DECISION TO REMOVE NEWSPAPER LINKS

Google reverses decision to delete British newspaper links
Jul 4, 2014
(Reuters)

Google Inc on Thursday reversed its decision to remove several links to stories in Britain's Guardian newspaper, underscoring the difficulty the search engine is having implementing Europe's "right to be forgotten" ruling.

The Guardian protested the removal of its stories describing how a soccer referee lied about reversing a penalty decision. It was unclear who asked Google to remove the stories.

Separately, Google has not restored links to a BBC article that described how former Merrill Lynch Chief Executive Officer E. Stanley O'Neal was ousted after the investment bank racked up billions of dollars in losses.

The incidents underscore the uncertainty around how Google intends to adhere to a May European court ruling that gave its citizens the "right to be forgotten:" to request the scrubbing of links to articles that pop up under a name search.

Privacy advocates say the backlash around press censorship highlight the potential dangers of the ruling and its unwieldiness in practice. That in turn may benefit Google by stirring debate about the soundness of the ruling, which the Internet search leader criticized the ruling from the outset.

Google, which has received more than 70,000 requests, began acting upon them in past days. And it notified the BBC and the Guardian, which in turn publicized the moves.

The incidents suggest that requesting removal of a link may actually bring the issue back into the public spotlight, rather than obscure it. That possibility may give people pause before submitting a "right to be forgotten" request.

"At least as it looks now, there are definitely some unworkable components," said Electronic Frontier Foundation activist Parker Higgins. "We've seen a number of situations in the past few days, where somebody in an effort to get a certain thing forgotten has brought more attention to it than ever was there before."

"It does make you think that maybe if you're actually trying to make an episode of your history be forgotten, this channel maybe isn’t the best way."

Google's objective is to protect the reliability and effectiveness of its search franchise. It remains uncertain how it adjudicates requests, or how they intend to carry them out going forward.

"Their current approach appears to be an overly broad interpretation," a spokeswoman for the Guardian said. "If the purpose of the judgment is not to enable censorship of publishers by the back door, then we'd encourage Google to be transparent about the criteria it is using to make these decisions, and how publishers can challenge them."

Google, which controls more than 90 percent of European online searches, said it was a learning process.

“This is a new and evolving process for us. We’ll continue to listen to feedback and will also work with data protection authorities and others as we comply with the ruling,” the company said in a statement.

Notifying media outlets about scrubbed links has the effect of enhancing transparency, privacy advocates say. It might also prompt European courts to re-examine aspects of the ruling, including how it affects media outlets' coverage.

"It’s terra incognito for everyone," said Jonathan Zittrain, co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. "If sites that receive the notices choose to publicize them in ways that end up boomeranging against the people requesting, that might cause the courts to examine what those sites are doing."

(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic in San Francisco and Aurindom Mukherjee in Bangalore; Editing by Kirti Pandey and Lisa Shumaker)

ORIGINAL POST

Europeans don't have a First Amendment.  Are they losing the right to find relevant information on the Internet?  A recent court decision in Europe is forcing Google to remove results from Internet searches.

 

But the truth is that Google has already been removing links at the request of public agencies and others in the US.

 

Right to be forgotten: Google may hate it, but we're dangerously close to making it work

By Jo Best 

ZDnet

July 4, 2014

Last month, the right to be forgotten was enshrined in European law, thanks to a ruling by the European Court of Justice. Except it wasn't a right, you weren't forgotten, and it hasn't really been enshrined anywhere. Confused? You're not the only one.
In May, the ECJ ruled on the case of a Spanish national who had, over a decade ago, been involved in an auction of property to settle social security debts. When people Googled his name, newspaper stories about the auction appeared prominently in search results. The man thought that the information about him was outdated, and the court found in his favour, ruling that Google must no longer return links to those newspaper stories when his name is searched for. The newspaper articles remain online, and can be found through Google when other search terms are used.
The mechanism is not an outrageous one, and it has precedents in the offline world. When applying for a job, for example, individuals are often asked about any criminal convictions. They are legally bound to tell their potential employer about them for a certain amount of time, but for many types of conviction that duty will eventually expire and the individual no longer has to disclose it.
Nonetheless, the result of the ruling involving what one Spanish man did in the 1990s has potentially far-reaching consequences for internet use in Europe.
In some quarters, the ruling has been described as giving every European the right to be forgotten, in others, as bringing in a new wave of press censorship. In reality, it does neither.
The ruling allows Europeans to request that data controllers, like Google, remove links to outdated or irrelevant information when searches are performed for their names. In the event the request is found to be justified, links will be removed from results returned for searches on that person's name, but the original source material will remain online and can be found through other queries. Data controllers still have the right to refuse requests when they feel the links in question are still pertinent for searches on an individual's name.
However, since Google opened a web form for people to request search result removal, tens of thousands of people have asked the search firm to do just that.

The right to be forgotten: Can we really trust Google to decide when our data should die?

The first removals

This week, the first such removals began to come to light. Large news organisations like the BBC and The Guardian, along with more smaller B2B outlets, all reported Google had contacted them to let them know they were subject to removals, while Google users began to see messages that certain search results "may have been removed under European data protection legislation".
A handful of recent 'right to be forgotten' removals were highlighted by The Guardian on Thursday. According to the paper, Google had alerted it that six articles would no longer be returned in search results for individuals' names. The names were not disclosed, although three articles referred to a Scottish referree, while another was a sweet story about French office workers making art from Post-It notes on their workplace windows.
Yet both cases illustrate the flaws in the system. Is the information in the story about the referree no longer relevant after three years? Is a system ostensibly meant to protect people's privacy being wasted on individuals who once happily told journalists about their creative ways of wasting office stationery?
It's a similar story over at the BBC. The BBC reports one of its articles involving the former head of Merrill Lynch Stan O'Neal no longer appeared in search results for a certain name. That name isn't, as you might have expected, Stan O'Neal. Instead, it's thought that the request is linked to a name in the comments section.
Was it right to do so?
The wider question is perhaps, when does that information become outdated in relation to its subject...

Are public records becoming less public? Extensive use of a private email system set up to avoid legally required archiving of documents

San Diego isn't the only place where the public's business is done in secrecy.

"The second release, a bombshell, demonstrated the extensive use of a private email system set up to avoid legally required archiving of documents as well as the extensive coordination between Walkers campaign staff and his official, taxpayer paid, County Executive staff. Intolerance and racism were also revealed in email exchanges."

See all posts re public records.

Milwaukee Co. John Doe Documents Unsealed From Secrecy - UPDATE
Puddytat
Daily Kos
May 21, 2014

The lamps are probably going to be burning into the night around Scott Walker tonight.

Documents in the first John Doe Probe, covering Walkers tenure as Milwaukee County Executives, were removed from secrecy today by the Judge overseeing the original John Doe. In the first investigation, 6 of Scott Walkers associates were indicted and found guilty mostly of felonies.

The judge who oversaw a 33-month secret John Doe investigation on Wednesday granted a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel request that he order prosecutors to return to Milwaukee County thousands of public records seized during the investigation.

The ruling means the records would then be subject to the state's Open Records Law, and it would be up to Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele whether they would be released to the public.

We have only seen a small portion of the documents from prior releases. One release, involving documents in a negligence case brought by the parents of a teenaged boy killed when a chunk of concrete fell from a County parking structure, revealed that Walker, his staff, and his campaign focused on keeping the story out of the press and limit Walkers exposure just before the Gubernatorial election. They succeeded in their efforts with coverage limited to the "accident" and not on Walkers diversion of building maintenance funds to pet projects.

The second release, a bombshell, demonstrated the extensive use of a private email system set up to avoid legally required archiving of documents as well as the extensive coordination between Walkers campaign staff and his official, taxpayer paid, County Executive staff. Intolerance and racism were also revealed in email exchanges.

Who knows what will be revealed when ALL of the documents are released. I can only imagine.

Since most of the communications were generated on private laptops and on a private email system running on a secret router, they were not available for Open Records Requests. Those documents will tell us what was REALLY going on in that office.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE:

I'm going to update instead of doing a new diary because this is still on the Rec List and in public view.

Today, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorialized that current Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele should release all the documents.

Nettesheim has settled firmly on the side of the public's right to know. Abele has said he's on the same side: He told the Editorial Board a few weeks ago that in a letter to Nettesheim, he had essentially asked the judge, "Whatever you can release, please release," and Abele signed a County Board resolution supporting the release of the documents. Now Abele can prove his support by actually releasing the documents.

So, it looks to JS that Abele wants to release the documents based on his past statements. They're adding a little more push to ensure it happens.

The public has a right to know about the dismissal of Larry B. Anderson

By Kathleen Sterling

The public has a right to know about the dismissal of Larry B. Anderson, yes, however what about the investigation report which triggered the dismissal of the Gonzalez et al team (Brown Act case - Sanderson et al vs. Reno et al, the Coleman et al vs Reno et al)? How about the settlements for the TCHD vs. Citigroup, Scripps, and the Hammes cases? Each one is very important as the former CEO Anderson hooked his lawyer friends to garner lots of public resources - Did we win any of them? In the grand scheme of things probably not, but rest assure the Procopio law firm and those Anderson favored gained much from the billable hours. How much was spent by the taxpayers to settle any of those cases?

Great article in the Coast News by Kirk Effinger: People deserve answers on high-profile dismissals

Kathleen Sterling: Thank you Mr. Effinger - the public has the right to know - Tri-City gets an "F" in transparency. I'm hopeful your added visibility, and the interest of persons like Mr. Page and Cozad, the public will be ignited to help what I've always believed - When Tri-City is truly transparent - the public will rally and we will all WIN!!!

Judge Judith Hayes respects the public's right to know about child welfare agencies, but not about school lawyers

See all Judge Judith Hayes posts.

Judge rebukes child welfare agency for withholding data on deaths
The Department of Social Services subverted a law giving access to information on youngsters who died while under its supervision, court says.
By Garrett Therolf
Los Angeles Times
January 3, 2013

A San Diego judge has struck down state child welfare regulations that significantly limited public access to information about minors who die from abuse and neglect.

In a stern rebuke, San Diego County Superior Court Judge Judith F. Hayes said the restrictions were "inconsistent and in conflict" with a law meant to greatly expand disclosures.

The Dec. 28 decision came in a lawsuit against the California Department of Social Services and its director, Will Lightbourne. An agency spokesman said Thursday that Lightbourne has not decided if he will appeal the ruling.

When the Legislature passed that law in 2008, members said they hoped policymakers and the public would use the resulting information to better identify flaws in the states' child welfare system that contribute to fatalities. Indeed, the limited information that has since emerged led to improvements in social worker training and information systems.

But Hayes said the regulations subverted the law's intent by limiting disclosure to cases in which officials determined that children died directly at the hands of their natural parents, guardians or foster parents.

The regulations, introduced by former social services Director John Wagner and firmly upheld by Lightbourne despite objections from child advocates, had the effect of excluding deaths at the hands of other people, including extended relatives and parents' boyfriends or girlfriends.

The regulations also caused the exclusion of cases in which abuse was not the sole factor directly causing the death, including suicides involving children who said they were taking the action to end the abuse of their parents.

Furthermore, the regulations prevented child welfare agencies from releasing case files if there was an objection from the district attorney, but the judge noted that this restriction was also not specified in the law.

Hayes' Dec. 28 ruling called the regulation arbitrary and capricious, and said "the restrictions lead to underreporting or inconsistencies in the reporting of child abuse cases involving fatalities."

Los Angeles County and other jurisdictions have struggled to interpret the regulations. As a result, local officials have implemented the law inconsistently, making comparisons of fatality numbers from one year to the next less meaningful.

Steve Keane, an attorney who joined with the Children's Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego Law School to argue the case, said the judge's ruling should clear up disclosure standards.

If authorities determine abuse or neglect at the time of a child's death, the details will be made public, he said. Los Angeles County's child welfare chief, Philip Browning, said he welcomed such a standard even though it would mean social workers will be required to acknowledge more deaths of children who had been under the department's watch.

"I'm a firm believer in having the regulations be very clear," Browning said Thursday. Browning said he hoped to spend less time in high-level deliberations discussing whether a case should be disclosed publicly and more time improving systems to prevent future deaths.

"We're going to make mistakes and we are going to just have to own up to them," Browning said. "I know there are going to be situations where we have not done as good a job as we should have...and hopefully we'll use this information to change that."

Lightbourne's nearly two-year tenure in the state post has previously attracted controversy.

After he was appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2011, reporters learned that Lightbourne had been hired under an unusual arrangement designed to skirt a state law that established a lower wage for his job. Lightbourne continued to be paid by Santa Clara County, where he previously served as child welfare chief, and the state reimbursed the county for the full amount. Months later, however, the contract was canceled and he became a state employee subject to the salary cap.

Before taking the state post, Lightbourne had applied to lead Los Angeles County's Department of Children and Family Services. But some officials cooled on his candidacy when he disclosed prior marijuana use, according to two sources involved in the selection process.

Although the officials noted that attitudes on marijuana use have relaxed significantly in California, drug use is often a factor in decisions to remove children from their families.

"Director Lightbourne truthfully and directly answered questions regarding his personal background, including the disclosure of marijuana use as a young man," his spokesman said Thursday.

Evidence piles up that Bush administration got many pre-9-11 warnings

Evidence piles up that Bush administration got many pre-9-11 warnings
By Robert Windrem
NBC News
September 11, 2012

Video: Author Kurt Eichenwald talks about what the White House knew leading up to the attacks and how they used the intelligence information in the months after.

On the 11th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, there is mounting evidence that the Bush administration received more intelligence warnings than previously known prior to the Sept. 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000. Kurt Eichenwald, a former New York Times reporter, wrote in an op-ed piece in Tuesday’s newspaper about a number of previously unknown warnings relayed to the White House by U.S. intelligence in the weeks and months prior to the attacks.

Eichenwald wrote of the warnings in his new book, “500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars.”...

More bizarre antics from Tri-City Hospital: refusing to release medical records to heirs in elder abuse case

Tri-City also tried to keep records out of the hands of the San Diego Union-Tribune.

A bizarre cover-up seems to be proceeding in an elder abuse case in North County Superior Court in which a dying man who was taking approximately 20 medications signed away his property to one of his nine children. Another of his children is suing to have the property returned to the man's surviving wife.

Tri-City Hospital apparently wants to cover up its actions in the case, in which Tri-City Hospital and the daughter who arranged the transfer of property concealed from other siblings the fact that the father had terminal cancer.

Tri-City offers three objection to the subpoena for the records. the first and second reasons for not providing the records are standard.

The third reason however reads:

"Third, the subpoena is unduly burdensome or oppressive, since deponent is not in possession of the records sought..."

Tri-City is claiming that it does not have the patient's medical records!

The daughter who obtained the property is represented by attorney Roland Achtel.

See entire pleading filed by Nicole Wells on behalf of Tri-City Medical Center.

Reasons unclear for fatal CPS decision to return a child to her parents

Reasons unclear for fatal CPS decision to return a child to her parents
By Brad Branan
The Sacramento Bee
Dec. 26, 2011

Giovanni Melchor was just a year old when he drowned in the stagnant water of his family's backyard swimming pool in late 2006. The family's single-story, purple-trimmed home in south Sacramento seemed well maintained on the outside. But inside, a neighbor said, the house was infested with roaches and city inspectors later cited Giovanni's father for an unsecured pool fence, the lack of a door closing off the garage from the pool, and a host of other health and safety code violations.Not even three years later, Giovanni's sister, Yeinira, who had been removed from the home and then returned, was also dead, a victim of medical neglect by her parents. Case files from Sacramento County Child Protective Services, recently obtained by The Bee, show how the 2-year-old girl died. Court records show that her parents, Jose Jaime Melchor, 35, and Elizabeth Melchor, 29, pleaded no contest to child endangerment charges in July and were deported this year.What the records don't explain is how the agency made the decision to return the child to care that led to her death.County officials say they cannot discuss the case or the records because of confidentiality laws.But without documentation, evaluating the agency's actions is difficult, said Ed Howard, senior counsel at the Children's Advocacy Institute in San Diego, who reviewed Yeinira's file at the request of The Bee."If we take them at face value – that there is no documentation for reuniting this child with a very troubled family – then this is a fiasco," Howard said. "You can't do this job without documenting your reasons for making such a decision."Specifically, CPS records for Yeinira do not show whether the agency conducted an assessment about the risk of returning her to the home – using what's called the Structured Decision Making tool – in violation of its own policies."In all of its reports, the (CPS) Oversight Committee has recommended comprehensive and consistent use of the tool," said Gina Roberson, co-chair of the committee. "It means social workers are using the best practices in trying to prevent child abuse."The CPS Oversight Committee, echoing the complaints of experts and child welfare advocates, has repeatedly found the agency's social workers have made questionable decisions and serious errors in high-risk cases such as the Melchor's. That assessment was repeated in other reports this year, including one by the California State Auditor.CPS released two sets of files on the Yeinira case. The first contained 12 pages and no information about the family's extensive record with CPS. The second, released after The Bee requested it under the California Public Records Act, had 124 pages.County Health and Human Services Director Ann Edwards said the release of the incomplete file was unintentional. But neither set answers the questions about the fatal decision to return her to her parents. A troubled historyThe year Giovanni died, the Melchors were living in a working-class neighborhood on Center Parkway. They had five children.Neighbors, attorneys and a social worker who had contact over the years with the Melchors, an immigrant family from Mexico, said the family needed help. They said Elizabeth Melchor seemed incapable of caring for her children and, according to court records, Jose Jaime Melchor physically abused his wife.Five reports of alleged abuse or neglect involving the family were made to CPS prior to Yeinira's birth in July 2006, court records show.Some of the reports involved the father, who allegedly had a drinking problem and abused his wife, according to court and CPS files. Other reports involved the mother, accused of hitting the children. Two of the reports were upheld by CPS.Yeinira had a heart defect and a cleft palate that made feeding her difficult. Less than a month after she was born, CPS received another complaint, noting the mother wasn't learning how to take care of her fragile daughter. The child was still in the hospital and at risk of dehydration if not properly nourished.Melchor "admits she is depressed and overwhelmed," according to an unidentified reporter quoted in the CPS case file. The mother and the father were refusing the training needed to feed Yeinira, according to the report. The source recommended placing Yeinira in a special foster home for her medical needs.The complaint was upheld. CPS started monitoring the child, but allowed her to go home with her mother. Yvette Washington, a home visitation worker with the county's Birth and Beyond program, was assigned to counsel the family."She seemed withdrawn," Washington said of Elizabeth Melchor in an interview with The Bee.Washington said she brought a public health nurse to the family's home to explain the risks of having a pool with stagnant water and a small and unsecured fence.The mother didn't seem to take the matter seriously, Washington said, adding that she stopped providing service to the family in 2006 because Melchor was unreceptive.Giovanni drowned in October that year. Melchor told police she was taking care of Yeinira, and left her other children unattended in the garage for about an hour, records show. Giovanni apparently wandered from the garage and into the pool.Police found the missing garage door and the unsecured pool fence. Neither parent was charged. CPS also initially declined to take protective action, determining that an allegation of neglect was unfounded, court records show.That reluctance befuddled some of the Melchors' neighbors.Andrea Garcia, who lived next door to the family, said the Melchors were troubled. Her interactions with the family usually came when something went wrong, she said, such as when the children were left outside in diapers in cold weather.The Garcias watched the other Melchor children while the parents dealt with the emergency of finding Giovanni in the pool.Andrea Garcia said the children were filthy. She said she entered the Melchor home for clean clothes and saw cockroaches everywhere.Her father, Jesus Garcia, said he had worried about the safety of the Melchor children under their mother's care."We never understood why CPS let her keep the kids," he said.Taken away, brought backTen months after the drowning, the four Melchor children became dependents of the county as a result of abuse and neglect, court records show.In Yeinira's case, her parents repeatedly failed to bring her to doctor's appointments, CPS records show. She missed eight appointments in seven months. Doctor's notes indicated a growing concern about her well-being.In foster care, she had surgery for her ailments and had recovered well. But in May 2008, less than two months after her surgery, Yeinira returned to her parents' home, joining her siblings who had been reunited with them several months earlier.To place a foster child back in a parent's home, CPS must convince a dependency court judge that the conditions that originally made the home unsafe had been fixed. For Yeinira, CPS needed to ensure the issues at home had been addressed, said Bill Grimm, senior counsel at the National Center for Youth Law in Oakland, who reviewed the child's file at The Bee's request."Given all that was going on before, there was a pretty high threshold for them to resume care," Grimm said.The lack of documentation calls the agency's decisions into question, said Grimm, adding that returning Yeinira home without doing a risk assessment would have been a serious error, if that's what happened.Without careAfter Yeinira returned, she did not see a doctor for about a year because the family didn't have insurance, her father told Sacramento police investigators in 2009.During that time, Yeinira had a seizure, her mother told police. She said she put rubbing alcohol on a cotton ball and placed it under Yeinira's nose to revive her.A couple of months later, Yeinira had another seizure. Yeinira "fell back, arched her back, and her feet twisted" as she fell onto concrete, her mother said, according to the investigative report. She again used rubbing alcohol and an onion to revive Yeinira.The problem returned the next day, as Yeinira "fell forward, and her head hit the wall and her eyes went up," her mother said.Again, Melchor turned to an onion and rubbing alcohol to revive her daughter. Her father was holding Yeinira in his lap when the mother noticed Yeinira wasn't breathing, she told investigators.The father brought her to Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, south Sacramento, minutes away from their home. Two days later, April 20, 2009, Yeinira died at Kaiser's Roseville hospital because of a lack of oxygen in the brain, an autopsy found.The Coroner's Office said physical abuse also may have contributed to her death, noting that she'd had a broken arm and other recent injuries.In court documents, Dr. Michael Myette of Kaiser said he could say with "95 percent to 99 percent certainty that if the parents had accessed care when she began seizing, she would still be alive."One of the Melchors' attorneys, Lori Calvert, said the couple grew up without doctors and that Elizabeth Melchor had been taught to revive her mother, who also suffered from seizures, as she had revived Yeinira.The Melchors faced a number of obstacles, their attorneys said. They were illiterate in their native Spanish, couldn't speak English and were poor.The prosecutor handling their neglect case agreed and cited those factors when explaining to a judge why she sought approval for a plea agreement resulting in a two-year jail sentence for the Melchors, the lowest under sentencing guidelines.The judge agreed to the sentencing recommendation. The Melchors had served about a year in jail awaiting trial and, with various credits, were released in July after pleading no contest to the charges. They were deported to Mexico shortly afterward, without any of their children. Their attorneys said the children were put up for adoption by the county.

Are schools better than the CIA at keeping secrets?

I was struck by how much the following article reminded me of the manner in which school districts and their attorneys conceal problems in schools.

"...[R]edacted passages revealed the agency's incompetence, rather than sensitive information."

Aug 30, 2011 20:31 ET
Censored by the CIA
A 23-year veteran of the agency reveals how the vetting process is used to stifle critics of the war on terror
By Laura Miller

News that the CIA has demanded "extensive cuts" from a forthcoming book by former FBI agent Ali Soufan made the front page of the New York Times last week. But Soufan's isn't the only recent memoir to earn the intelligence agency's wrath by, in part, criticizing its use of brutal interrogation techniques in the decade since 9/11. There's also "The Interrogator," by Glenn Carle, a 23-year CIA veteran who was given the task of questioning a purported al-Qaida kingpin in 2002. Carle's book was published earlier this summer with many passages -- and occasionally entire pages -- blocked out with black bars to show where the agency had insisted on redactions.

Soufan has called many of the CIA's excisions from his own book "ridiculous," pointing out that some of the "classified" information is a matter of public record and appears in the 9/11 report and even in a memoir by former CIA director George Tenet. Carle had a similar experience; "The Interrogator" is laced with caustic footnotes explaining that redacted passages revealed the agency's incompetence, rather than sensitive information.

When I reviewed Carle's book in July, I made a few guesses about facts the author was obliged to leave out of "The Interrogator." Less than a day had passed before I learned that most of my guesses were wrong. Readers sent me helpful emails with links to articles supplying all the missing details, including the identity of the detainee Carle interrogated, a man he eventually came to believe was innocent.

If the CIA is trying to prevent information in Soufan's and Carle's manuscripts from reaching the public, they've obviously already failed. If anything, the agency's efforts to censor these and other books only seem likely to inflame interest in the forbidden material, which will surface anyway. Does the CIA's power to vet the writings of former government employees have any teeth in the Internet age? I decided to call up Carle to ask about his experience with the agency's censors...

Iraq War Vet: "We Were Told to Just Shoot People, and the Officers Would Take Care of Us"

Iraq War Vet: "We Were Told to Just Shoot People, and the Officers Would Take Care of Us"
07 April 2010
by: Dahr Jamail
t r u t h o u t

On Monday, April 5, Wikileaks.org posted video footage from Iraq, taken from a US military Apache helicopter in July 2007 as soldiers aboard it killed 12 people and wounded two children. The dead included two employees of the Reuters news agency: photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and driver Saeed Chmagh.

The US military confirmed the authenticity of the video.

The footage clearly shows an unprovoked slaughter, and is shocking to watch whilst listening to the casual conversation of the soldiers in the background.

Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (read "Carolyn Batiste") tells minority trustees to "suck it up"

The San Diego Union Tribune reports today that "Barbara Beno, president of the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges, held a special training session for trustees of the Oceanside-based community college on the roles and responsibilities of the board and college president."

Ms. Beno made it clear that a president of an institution must NOT be held accountable by minority trustees if the majority trustees approve of the president's actions--even if those actions include using $2 million in taxpayer dollars to attack her opponents on the faculty and in the administration.

Ms. Beno had earlier warned MiraCosta "that its accreditation could be in jeopardy because...strife among trustees was negatively affecting the campus."

That's a pretty subjective determination, Ms. Beno. I think strife among trustees is very healthy, and has helped expose a corrupt system that benefits lawyers and insurance companies at the expense of taxpayers. But my guess is that this system is precisely what Ms. Beno wants to protect.

What do you get out of this, Ms. Beno?

Why do you want to keep $2 million investigations secret from the taxpayers who pay for them?

"[Speaking openly about issues that have been voted on]... doesn't help the college move on,” Beno said.

Clearly Beno means that it doesn't help the college stand still. It could result in changes. It could result in majority trustees losing elections. And that's what Beno doesn't want.

But wait. Are Beno and the majority trustees allowed to use public institutions and public money to control voters?

Clearly not. It's a clear misuse of public funds and abuse of public officials' power. Carolyn Batiste should be ashamed of herself. She has abused her power long enough.

Thank goodness candidate George McNeil is running to replace her.

The SDUT article continues, "Trustee Judy Strattan said if millions of dollars are being spent in a way she believes is irresponsible, she doesn't know if she can just let the matter drop. She referred to more than $2 million spent on the palm tree investigation, ensuing legal fees and related costs, which included a $1.6 million settlement agreement with [Victoria] Richart when she resigned."

Thank you, Judy. MiraCosta needs more trustees like you and Jacqueline Simon and Gloria Carranza and candidate George McNeil.

Beno's message for minority trustees is to "suck it up." This sounds like good advice for Ms. Beno to apply to herself. Just grit your teeth, Barbara, and count to 10. You can survive this. It's called open government, and it's an absolute requirement in a democracy.

Did Bonnie Dumanis and Patrick O'Toole simply create a new PIU?

Bonnie Dumanis recently moved controversial Public Integrity Unit chief Patrick O'Toole out of the unit. But what is he doing now?

He continues to be absent from the District Attorney's office flow chart. But perhaps that is because he doesn't want to be seen as subordinate to Bonnie. He'd rather not be seen at all.

I guess Bonnie and Pat want to leave the matter of O'Toole's current assignment up to our imaginations.

Here are some possibilities I've come up with:

1. A new PIU has been formed, known as the "public intimidation unit" or, alternatively, the "political impact unit." It will continue to investigate political enemies, but in a secretive manner.

2. O'Toole's new job will continue to involve the tipster(s) who initiated the investigations of the Chula Vista city employee who took 2 hours off work to spy on mayor and former CVESD school board member Cheryl Cox's yacht party with David Malcolm, and councilman Steve Castaneda's claim that he never planned to buy a condo which he never bought.

3. O'Toole will ask for and receive assistance from his friends in the Bush Justice Department, an office which has proven to be expert in political prosecutions (Don Seligman), and hiring and firing based on ideology and politics (Anthony Gonzalez and Monica Goodling and the eight fired US attorneys).

4. O'Toole will prove to be an invaluable aid to Dumanis' political ambitions, or, alternatively, the two of them will go down in flames together when their secret shenanigans are exposed.

Should we elect ALL public entity lawyers?

Who makes decisions for public entities? Is it the elected officials? Or do behind-the-scenes lawyers tell the officials and/or employees what to do?

I have long suspected that those lawyers-not the elected officials-make many decisions.

I found support for my suspicion in this July 1, 2008 Voice of San Diego article by Rob Davis:

"...The agreement to extend negotiations had already been approved by Janice Weinrick, the city Redevelopment Agency's deputy executive director. She said she was told to sign it by Murray Kane, a CCDC attorney. "I'm a document signer," she said. "I only did what I was told, to sign off.""

We need to know more about the lawyers who represent public entities. It seems that the lawyers make the decisions, and the officials and employees just obey them. If there's a problem, everyone says, "I was just doing what my (choose one: client or lawyer) told me to do.""

Government + secrecy = stupidity

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/10/10/opinion/editorials/19_41_5810_9_07.txt

By: North County Times Opinion staff

Our view: MiraCosta board's secret meeting partly to blame for president's bloated buyout

Samuel Johnson once said, "Where secrecy begins, vice or roguery is not far off." He seems to have forgotten stupidity. In fact, it's a fair bet that most of the stupidity conducted by your elected representatives on your behalf happens in secret.

Our latest reminder of this eternal truth came in revelations that two MiraCosta College trustees secretly met with former President Victoria Munoz Richart just days before they approved her extravagent golden parachute.


On Oct. 4, the North County Times' Philip K. Ireland reported that MiraCosta College Trustees Rudy Fernandez and Carolyn Batiste met June 8 with Richart, her attorney and the retired judge who mediated the dispute between them at the San Diego offices of the college's lawyer. The participants signed some kind of "confidentiality agreement." The three trustees in the board minority -- Gloria Carranza, Judy Strattan and Jacqueline Simon -- say the board never voted to approve the meeting and that they were kept in the dark about it.

A college official told Ireland that the meeting was convened to discuss Richart's claim that some board members' comments about her amounted to a public evaluation of her performance. In other words, the board was being accused of violating the practice of conducting the president's job evaluations in private and Richart was threatening a lawsuit.

Truth is, we don't know exactly what transpired at the meeting -- that's secret. It's probably a safe bet, however, that the trustees hatched their plan to sell out the taxpayers they were elected to represent in this heretofore secret meeting. Just 11 days later, the board reached an agreement -- in the dead of night -- that allowed Richart to walk away from the college and begin her life as a woman of leisure, along with $1.5 million of North County's tax dollars for her trouble.

Defenders of the board may argue that because the matter involved a potential lawsuit, the board had the right -- in fact, the duty -- to meet in private, and they would be right. But that's not what happened here.

Instead, it appears that two board members, either on their own or in conjunction with other board members, made a decision to begin severance negotiations outside of normal, legal channels, such as the formal "closed session" of a board meeting. That dumb decision inevitably led to the stupidity that followed almost two weeks later, when the full board was presented with the bill for Richart's now infamous buyout.

Of course, we've come to expect this sort of news from MiraCosta, which has spent two years mired in the "Palm-gate" scandal and its aftermath. There's been enough blame to go around : Richart's imperious style created too many enemies, but the faculty resistance to the investigation she needed to conduct was itself overblown.

But the more we learn about the Richart buyout, the clearer it is that the college district's board bears most of the responsibility for the school's recent embarrassments. Similar conclusions have fueled a recall campaign against board President Charles Adams and Trustee Gregory Post, who along with Fernandez and Batiste comprise the board majority.

We understand the impetus for the recall, but ultimately disagree. Recalls ought to be reserved for when there is evidence of criminality or malfeasance. And in this case, a recall isn't necessary.

For one, Adams will cede the board presidency on Dec. 1. A recall could also cost the district as much as $1 million that could be better spent on actual education.

Finally, if voters are as unhappy with the board as recall proponents assert, they'll have a chance to change its course next year by dumping Batiste in favor of a reform candidate, while re-electing incumbents Carranza and Simon from the board minority. With Strattan, a new majority would then be able to set the board agenda.

Before then, however, the board should promptly make one change that would halt its stumbles in secrecy. They should vote to lift the ban on speaking to the media that muzzles board members other than the board president, now the elusive Adams. Why should the duly elected representatives of the voting public be routinely silenced?

Without dissenting voices, without the scrutiny of public deliberation and decision-making, governments tend to tilt toward stupidity and worse. Decisions made in the dark have a funny way of costing taxpayers a lot of our hard-earned money. This summer's MiraCosta mess appears to be no exception.

Do people keep secrets when they believe they're doing right?

Ellen Dowd post is HERE.


CIA Tapes Were Kept From 9/11 Panel, Report Says
Agency Defends Its Role as Information Provider in Commission's Investigation of Terrorist Plots
By Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, December 23, 2007

Former members and staffers of the 9/11 Commission have concluded that the CIA withheld videotapes of harsh interrogation sessions even after specific and "very detailed" requests about the two prisoners whose tapes were later destroyed, according to a review of classified material by the panel.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/22/AR2007122201622.html?hpid=topnews

Bush Doesn't Recall CIA Tape Destruction

December 7, 2007
By PAMELA HESS,AP
...White House press secretary Dana Perino said Friday that President Bush did not have any recollection about the tapes or about their destruction. But she could not rule out White House involvement in the tapes' destruction, saying that she asked only the president about it, not others.

Perino refused to comment on whether the destruction could represent obstruction of justice or a threat to cases against terrorism suspects. She said that if the attorney general decides to investigate, "of course the White House would support that."...

Dear Big Brother: You can know more about me if I can know more about you

I can understand why government wants more information about its citizens. What I don't understand is why government is keeping secrets about how it operates.

Government today seems to be turning democracy on its head.

What's the big problem with the federal Freedom of Information Act, and the California Public Records Act?

Why expand government power and secrecy at the same time? If government gets its legitimacy from the public, but doesn't let the public know what it's up to, then it's not legitimate.

When the public asks how much public entities pay their lawyers, there's really no legitimate reason for not telling us.

We must assume that the lawyers paid by us are actually serving a different master.

Who is that master? Elected officials? Public employees? Liability insurance companies? The lawyers themselves?

Or all of the above?

Bush misled regarding Plame, says McClellan

From the New York Times:

"The hints of intrigue and betrayal at the trial of I. Lewis Libby Jr. over the leaking of a C.I.A. agent’s identity grew even more intriguing today as a snippet made the rounds from the forthcoming memoir by Scott McClellan, who was President Bush’s chief spokesperson in 2006.

"In the 121 words released by the book’s publisher, PublicAffairs, Mr. McClellan appears to hold President Bush partially responsible for statements to the White House press corps in 2003 that later proved to be inaccurate — that Karl Rove, senior counselor to the president, and Mr. Libby, vice president’s chief of staff, never leaked the identity of the agent, Valerie Plame (emphasis added):
The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

"There was one problem. It was not true..."

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/ex-bush-spokesmans-tantalizing-snippet-on-cia-leak/?hp

Soldiers prefer Dragonskin

Soldiers like Dragonskin

Why were high-profile soldiers wearing a type of body armor that was banned by the army?

a) They were foolish, careless individuals.
b) They believed that the army had, for reasons unrelated to safety, actually banned the best body armor, Dragonskin.
c) They were smart people who were temporarily unhinged by immunizations that caused psychotic behavior.

NBC's Lisa Myers talked to the man who designed Interceptor, the body armor that the army uses. He says Dragonskin is better than the armor he designed!

So NBC conducted its own test. It found Dragonskin to be better.

The CIA also decided Dragonskin is better.

Brig. General Mark Brown claims that Dragonskin failed a highly secretive test done by the army.

NBC's Adam Ciralsky and Lisa Myers report that "there’s just one problem: the Army banned Dragon Skin in March, almost two months before that testing began in May."

The report contains an interview of Gen. Brown:

"[LISA] MYERS: General, the Army banned Dragon Skin before the Army even tested it.

"BROWN: Lisa, I’m — I’m not aware of that… I don’t know that it had not been tested at that time. I wasn’t here.

The NBC report notes:

"Nevin Rupert, a mechanical engineer and ballistics expert, was for seven years the Army’s leading authority on Dragon Skin. Now a whistleblower, he says the Army’s timing wasn’t coincidental.

"RUPERT: I believe there are some Army officials at the lower levels that deliberately tried to sabotage it.

"MYERS: What possible motive would Army officials have for blocking a technology that could save lives?

"RUPERT: Their loyalty is to their organization and maintaining funds."

Who were the high profile soldiers who wore Dragonskin after it was banned?

NBC news reports that, well after the Army ban, "select soldiers assigned to protect generals and VIPs in Iraq and Afghanistan wore Dragon Skin. An active duty soldier, who asked us to conceal his identity, told NBC he wore Dragon Skin on certain missions, with the full knowledge of his commanders."


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18720550/

What's the problem with public records?

King County in Washington has the same problem that we have here in San Diego County: many public entities simply ignore public records requests.

The Seattle Times published the following story on August 31, 2005.

"We can only hope that last week's nearly $300,000 judgment against King County for years of flouting a legitimate public-records request will make an impression on public agencies.

"Armen Yousoufian…acting independently…was able to wrest public documents from an agency reluctant to give them over…

"Last week, Judge Michael Hayden boosted the fine from $5 to $15 a day…

"In 2001, Learned ruled "the county was negligent ... at every step of the way, and this negligence amounted to a lack of good faith." The appeals court ratcheted up its criticism, characterizing the failure to disclose public documents as "gross negligence."

"There is nothing for the county to be proud about here. A better, more reassuring response would have been:
"We screwed up. Big time. We're sorry. We won't ever do it again.""