The New York Time by Cecilia Kang April 21, 2019 WASHINGTON — When Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook called for regulating harmful internet content in an opinion column last month, Republicans in Washington expressed outrage that he was calling on the government to regulate speech. Within hours, the company’s top lobbyists started spreading another message to conservatives: Don’t […]

A sneaky measure making its way through the Florida House of Representatives would require the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) to automatically seal millions of criminal records. Maddeningly, it’s a provision in a bill entitled “Public Safety.” Under HB 7125, FDLE must seal criminal history records if a charging document isn’t filed; if charges […]

Daytona Beach News-Journal by Frank Fernandez April 21, 2019 Marsy’s Law, an Amendment to Florida’s Constitution approved by voters in November, is clouding Florida’s Sunshine law, making it harder to track crime as some law enforcement agencies cite it to withhold information. The law is being unevenly applied and making it harder to keep track of crime, […]

News Chief by Gary White April 20, 2019 Polk County cities are caught in nationwide trend to remove online material that can’t be fixed to accommodate visually impaired. LAKELAND — City Clerk Kelly Koos has received phone calls lately from residents complaining that they couldn’t find campaign documents or other archival material on the city’s […]

Florida Phoenix by Lucy Morgan April 22, 2019 Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles T. Canady has come to the aid of Floridians who want to see public records stashed in county courthouses around the state. In an order released this week, Canady rewrote the rules for access to the records, erasing a requirement imposed […]

Treasure Coast Newspaper Editorial Board April 18, 2019 Martin County Commissioner Sarah Heard dodged a bullet. Or maybe it was more like a cannonball. Heard was put on trial earlier this month on charges she’d violated public records law. Assistant state attorneys prosecuted the case, which had resulted from Martin County’s now-settled lawsuit with the Lake […]

AAUP by Frank LoMonte April 18, 2019 In August 2013, with the university’s finances in disarray and its accreditation in peril, Norfolk State University trustees took a drastic step: they fired the institution’s president, Tony Atwater, just two years into his presidency and with ten months left on his contract. As the depth of the […]

The Guardian by Alex Hern April 18, 2019 Facebook has admitted to “unintentionally” uploading the address books of 1.5 million users without consent, and says it will delete the collected data and notify those affected. The discovery follows criticism of Facebook by security experts for a feature that asked new users for their email password as […]

Click Orlando by Emilee Speck April 17, 2019 Hours before Satellite Beach city council members were set to discuss adding a policy that would allow city officials the right to decline interview requests to “aggressive media,” the city manager tells News 6 the policy item on Wednesday’s meeting agenda will be removed. The proposed policy on […]