Bridge inspection reports can legally remain secret, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s office has decided.

Bridge maintenance is a life and death matter as so clearly proven by the recent I35 Minneapolis bridge collapse. In 1990, the Minneapolis bridge was inspected by the US Department of Transportation and found to be “structurally deficient.” In 2005, the Minneapolis bridge was again rated as “structurally deficient” and in possible need of replacement, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Bridge Inventory database.

The bridge collapse August 1, 2007, killing 13 people.

Transparency into goverment activity creates peer pressure on government officials to do what they are elected to do, in this case fix broken down bridges.

By his ruling, AG Abbott has eliminated the peer pressure on the bureaucrats at the Texas Department of Transportation. In essence, he has told Texas to just trust the department to do the right thing.
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In this recent story writer Frank Miele attacks the New York Times’ decision to publish classified military secrets. His argument is that publication endangered Americans and essentially amounted to treason.

The Open Records Project would agree with part of Miele’s argument but offer a caveat and some perspective.

Yes, it would seem that the New York Times’ decision to publish endangered Americans and from a certain point of view could be considered treason.

However, we would suggest that some consideration be given to the classification process itself. Who determines what and according to which parameters information is classified? Information is power because it offers the potential for embarassment and the invocation of peer pressure. Information makes the dissemination of untruth more difficult.

Selective disclosure is also power. In isolation disinformation and information are indistiguishable.

On this count, the Times’ record on openness is a little spotty, missing the Holocaust, Castro’s Communism, and Stalin’s murder of millions.

The Times has yet to return Duranty’s Pulitzer Prize.
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Presidents don’t have indefinite veto power over which records are made public after they’ve left office, a federal judge has ruled.

Some presidents might be embarrassed by their records in office. Public disclosure could tarnish their finely tuned “legacy.”

Following U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly’s ruling, the presidential legacy belongs to the people who elected the president. That legacy includes both the achievements and the failures as recorded by the documents of the administration.

No former president may edit history.
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Iran’s judiciary has sealed off the offices of a popular news Web site critical of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s policies after journalists continued to update it despite official filtering, the Web site said. The site, when accessed via a link outside Iran, indicated it was last updated on Sept. 23.

In addition, two prominent pro-reform newspapers, Ham Mihan and Sharq, both critical of the government, have been shut down. Although Iran says it allows free speech, journalists say they have to tread carefully.

I guess it depends on the meaning of “free.”
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Darrell David Rice spent 10 years in a federal prison for the attempted kidnapping of a woman in Shenandoah National Park in 1997.

The 39-year-old was the government’s prime suspect in a brutal double slaying of two hikers in the same park the year before.

Now he is living on Kent Island, Maryland. The Queen Anne’s County Sheriff’s Office said they can offer no assurances Rice is not a threat and refused to release a photo of Rice.

As a service to the community of Kent Island, The Internet Open Records project is publishing this photo of Rice.
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Gov. Chris Gregoire has refused to reveal the identities of some people who weren’t picked for seats on the state’s new “Sunshine Committee.”

The Sunshine Committee’s job is to sort through the more than 300 exemptions to the state’s Public Records Act and prepare a report by Nov. 15 in which it will recommend that the Legislature keep, repeal or amend particular exemptions.

The governor fails to see the irony of her decision.
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Whether it’s a hernia repair or heart bypass, doctors with a lot of experience performing a given operation tend to have better results. The problem for patients in choosing a physician has been finding out which ones have the know-how.

In a little-noticed decision last week, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled in favor of a consumer group that sued the Health and Human Services Department to allow disclosure of specific data about doctors from the Medicare claims database.

Doctors are worried that Medicare files do not account for the severity of the cases that individual physicians may handle.

Patients are worried that they might trust their health and their lives to a professional who is less than competent.
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The salaries of government employees in California, including police officers, are a public record and must be available upon request.

The right to privacy argument against dislosure made by employee unions “is not a reasonable one,” the justices wrote, ending a lawsuit the Contra Costa Times filed more than three years ago against the city of Oakland.

Even if disclosure of the information “may cause discomfort or embarrassment” it must be released, the decision states.

Of course, discomfort or embarrassment is precisely the purpose of the transparency enabled by Open Records. An uncomfortable or embarrassed individual is more likely to change behavior than a comfortable one.

It’s called peer pressure, and it’s one of the characteristics of a well functioning society.
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Aaron T. Gunn, a politically connected former teacher has avoided the sex offender registry for two years after pleading guilty to having sex with an eighth-grade student.

State Representative Chuck Espy, a Democrat from Clarksdale, was a scheduled character witness for Gunn. The judge says that during the trial, Espy patted Gunn on the back and nodded at jurors. Thomas said the show of support from a member of a politically connected family could have swayed the jury so he called off the trial.
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Wikipedia is a web-based free content encyclopedia written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. It currently contains about 2 million articles.

Anybody can anonymously create a Wikipedia entry or modify an existing entry. A new WEB site maps Wikipedia entries to the known Internet addresses of several political and commercial entities.

The Open Records Project believes that Wikipedia is a valuable free resource of information. We also believe that transparency of authorship will tend to maintain the quality level of the content.
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