Intro | Background | Resources | Forum Engage with others and share ideas on how drones could — or whether they should — be used by journalists. This moderated forum is intended to engage the public and provoke a thoughtful conversation on the place of drones in journalism and how the technology may affect other interests at play. Although this is […]
Below is the March 1o, 2014, testimony of NEFAC’s executive director, Rosanna Cavanagh, Esq., given to Connecticut’s state Committee on Government Administration and Elections. Cavanagh addressed issues related to Bill No. 381 which concerns victim privacy and the public’s right to know. As Executive Director of the New England First Amendment Coalition, a non-profit organization […]
By Rosanna Cavanagh The New England First Amendment Coalition today sent a petition (.pdf) to the United States Justice Department requesting that it withdraw its subpoena of The New York Times reporter James Risen to testify in the trial of former CIA employee Jeffrey Sterling as to his confidential source for information published in Risen’s […]
By Hilary Niles Vermont’s annual Public Records Act legislative review (.pdf), now in its third year, may yield significant updates for all levels of government in 2014 — particularly in relation to open meetings. Depending on how they shape up through the legislative process, proposed amendments could strengthen access to public policymaking. Pending legislation (.pdf) includes […]
By Eli Sherman In 2002, Judge Damon Keith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit said, “When a government begins closing doors, it selectively controls information rightfully belonging to the people.” The judge’s words, although used to describe secret deportation hearings in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, are applicable to any dispute between […]
By David DesRoches A high-powered public relations company and the biggest law firm in Connecticut have teamed up to keep residents of Darien, Conn., in the dark about aspects of an ongoing crisis in the public school district’s special education program. While the district has taken tremendous and costly steps toward rebuilding its special education […]
By Brent Curtis The legal odyssey that my newspaper and I engaged in for the last three years started not as a question about freedom of information, but as a question of whether or not a police sergeant for the city of Rutland was being criminally investigated for downloading child pornography on his work computer. It […]
By Steven Brown On November 15, immediately after the Cranston City Council narrowly defeated a proposed police union contract, the wards of two Council members who voted against the contract were flooded with parking tickets. As Steven Stycos, one of the Council members, documented, 128 tickets were issued in those two wards in the two […]
By Bill Ketzer Introduced in January 2013, House Bill 110 in New Hampshire sought to impose mandatory reporting requirements on any person witnessing or recording an act of animal cruelty committed against livestock. These efforts are commonly referred to as “Ag Gag” bills[1], which seek primarily to criminalize the act of documenting animal cruelty, environmental […]
By Rosanna A. Cavanagh The subpoena of James Risen, an investigative reporter for The New York Times, to testify at the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a former employee of the CIA, has been the subject of a two-year litigation, the resolution of which will either help spur an era of restoration of our cherished First […]