Tag Archives: Electronic Records

Downtown Center BID, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Starting January 1, 2020 The California Public Records Act Requires Agencies To Allow Requesters To Make Copies Of Records At Inspection Time Subject To Some Limitations — The Limitations Are Clear For Tangible Records — The Means Of Copying Must Not Require Contact With The Record — But Things Are Not So Clear With Respect To Electronic Records — The Legislative History Of The Bill Makes It Clear That Copying Actual Files Must Be Allowed Though — But The Downtown Center BID — Which Has Adopted A Ludicrous Series Of Obstructionist Policies Over The Years Did Not Agree — Said I Could Photograph Electronic Records On The Screen But Not Copy The Files Directly — But I Was Like No Freaking Way And Here Is Why — And In A Rare Moment Of Sanity They Totally Caved!

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Last year the legislature passed and Gavin Newsom signed into law a bill amending the California Public Records Act to allow requesters to copy records at inspection time using their own equipment. The precise language added to the law at §6253(d) is:

(d)(1) A requester who inspects a disclosable record on the premises of the agency has the right to use the requester’s equipment on those premises, without being charged any fees or costs, to photograph or otherwise copy or reproduce the record in a manner that does not require the equipment to make physical contact with the record, unless the means of copy or reproduction would result in either of the following:

(A) Damage to the record.

(B) Unauthorized access to the agency’s computer systems or secured networks by using software, equipment, or any other technology capable of accessing, altering, or compromising the agency’s electronic records.

(2) The agency may impose any reasonable limits on the use of the requester’s equipment that are necessary to protect the safety of the records or to prevent the copying of records from being an unreasonable burden to the orderly function of the agency and its employees. In addition, the agency may impose any limit that is necessary to maintain the integrity of, or ensure the long-term preservation of, historic or high-value records.

And this new requirement took effect on January 1, 2020. Agencies have been all over the place on allowing requesters to photograph paper records at inspection time, but mostly the new language is clear enough that they’re just complying. Even the extraordinarily psychopathically obstructionist Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control conceded with respect to paper records.
Continue reading Starting January 1, 2020 The California Public Records Act Requires Agencies To Allow Requesters To Make Copies Of Records At Inspection Time Subject To Some Limitations — The Limitations Are Clear For Tangible Records — The Means Of Copying Must Not Require Contact With The Record — But Things Are Not So Clear With Respect To Electronic Records — The Legislative History Of The Bill Makes It Clear That Copying Actual Files Must Be Allowed Though — But The Downtown Center BID — Which Has Adopted A Ludicrous Series Of Obstructionist Policies Over The Years Did Not Agree — Said I Could Photograph Electronic Records On The Screen But Not Copy The Files Directly — But I Was Like No Freaking Way And Here Is Why — And In A Rare Moment Of Sanity They Totally Caved! →

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Lawsuits, Public Records Act Pragmatics

A Coalition Of Poverty-Focused Community-Driven Advocacy And Legal Aid Organizations Filed An Amicus Brief With The California Supreme Court Asking That They Review The Abominable Court Of Appeals Opinion In National Lawyers Guild V. City Of Hayward — Which Held That Agencies Can Charge For Time Spent Redacting Electronic Records — Now Being Used By The LAPD To Functionally Deny Everyone Access To Emails — This Was In November 2018 But I Just Recently Got A Copy — The Supremes Did Agree To Hear It — And I Also Have A Copy Of The Stunning Opening Brief

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Don’t know if you’re aware, but in September 2018 the California Court of Appeal held that local agencies could charge CPRA requesters for staff time for redacting electronic records. In particular, the City of Hayward charged the National Lawyers Guild more than $3,000 to redact some parts of bodycam videos. It’s well-established for paper records that agencies must allow inspection at no cost and if copies are requested, can charge only the direct cost of copying.

The Court of Appeals based its opinion on the CPRA’s much-abused §6253.9(b)(2) which states that an agency can charge a requester for the bare privilege of inspecting a record under a small set of very specific circumstances:

… the requester shall bear the cost of producing a copy of the record, including the cost to construct a record, and the cost of programming and computer services necessary to produce a copy of the record when … [t]he request would require data compilation, extraction, or programming to produce the record.

The court’s reasoning was that redaction of a video constitutes extraction required to produce the record. Sane people can see, however, that the video already exists. Nothing is required to produce it. This section is talking about e.g. running queries against databases, where the requester only wants certain information and the results of the query constitute a new record that “would require data compilation, extraction, or programming to produce.”

And as you can imagine, after this opinion was published, obstructionist anti-CPRA lawyers all over the state started drooling on their pillows in glee. For instance, Carol Humiston, the soon-to-be-disbarred Rasputinian ear-whisperer to transparency-averse business improvement districts all over Los Angeles, advised her clients on the basis of this decision to assert that if I wanted to see any more of their damn emails I would have to pay for them to buy Adobe Pro so that they could redact them.

She backed off on this outlandish claim after I pointed out repeatedly that emails weren’t found in the wild as PDFs so that there was no case to be made for purchasing an expensive PDF editor to do a job that the built-in text editors that come with every computer operating system could do better. However, the LAPD also glommed onto this case, and the City Attorney’s office began theorizing madly, and now if you submit a request to LAPD for emails through NextRequest you’re met with an aggressive notice warning you that you’re going to pay and pay and pay unless you withdraw your request right now, and the notice explicitly cites the case.

So yeah, this opinion sucks and sucks big time, and it doesn’t just suck in theory, it’s actively sucking in practice even now as I write these very words. But at least it was appealed to the California Supreme Court. And at least the Supreme Court agreed to hear it. And papers have been filed, but it turns out to be really hard to get pleadings out of the Supreme Court.

But recently I was lucky enough to obtain a couple of interesting items. Here’s an amicus letter from a coalition of public interest law firms and activist organizations explaining the harm that the decision is doing. And here’s the opening brief, which explains in well-reasoned and exceedinly convincing terms why the Court should reverse this extraordinarily bad appellate decision. Both are fabulously worth reading, and there’s a transcription of the amicus letter after the break.
Continue reading A Coalition Of Poverty-Focused Community-Driven Advocacy And Legal Aid Organizations Filed An Amicus Brief With The California Supreme Court Asking That They Review The Abominable Court Of Appeals Opinion In National Lawyers Guild V. City Of Hayward — Which Held That Agencies Can Charge For Time Spent Redacting Electronic Records — Now Being Used By The LAPD To Functionally Deny Everyone Access To Emails — This Was In November 2018 But I Just Recently Got A Copy — The Supremes Did Agree To Hear It — And I Also Have A Copy Of The Stunning Opening Brief →

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Skid Row Neighborhood Council

Newly Obtained ICS File Proves That Estela Lopez Organized That March 20 Conference Call Between Her, Rena Leddy, And Rockard Delgadillo About Nuking The Skid Row Neighborhood Council And That It Was Organized No Later Than March 18

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Background: You can read my previous stories on the Skid Row Neighborhood Council formation effort and also see Jason McGahan’s article in the Weekly and Gale Holland’s article in the Times for more mainstream perspectives.

About ten days ago I wrote about a March 20, 2017 conference call between Rena Leddy, Estela Lopez, and potentially illegal lobbyist and former City Attorney Rockard Delgadillo, the point of which was to discuss how they were going to destroy the Skid Row Neighborhood Council. At that time the only evidence I had about the meeting was an entry from Rena Leddy’s calendar, which she’d printed out and redacted with a black marker. This, of course, destroys what’s often the most interesting aspect of an electronic record, which is to say the metadata.

Now, the California Public Records Act has an exceedingly useful requirement with respect to electronic records. It’s found at §6253.9(a)(1), which states:

Unless otherwise prohibited by law, any agency that has information that constitutes an identifiable public record not exempt from disclosure pursuant to this chapter that is in an electronic format shall make that information available in an electronic format when requested by any person and, when applicable, shall comply with the following … The agency shall make the information available in any electronic format in which it holds the information.

Modern calendar applications almost universally use the ICS file format for their entries. So on June 28 I sent Rena Leddy an email asking her for the raw ICS file. She sent it to me yesterday, and now I’m making it available to you either as files or, as always, there’s a transcription after the break:

There are two crucial pieces of information revealed by the metadata. First of all, Estela Lopez created the event. That is, she organized the call with Rockard Delgadillo and subsequently invited Rena Leddy to join. At a minimum this fact will be useful in framing future CPRA requests.

Second, the event was created on March 18, 2017 at noon PST.1 Previously we’d only been able to pin down the beginning of Rockard Delgadillo’s involvement in anti-SRNC lobbying to 11 a.m. on March 20. This is a 47 hour improvement in the timeline I’m constructing. Turn the page for analysis and a transcription of the ICS file.
Continue reading Newly Obtained ICS File Proves That Estela Lopez Organized That March 20 Conference Call Between Her, Rena Leddy, And Rockard Delgadillo About Nuking The Skid Row Neighborhood Council And That It Was Organized No Later Than March 18 →

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