Bermuda: Campaigners praise passage of PATI bill (quote from Toby Mendel)

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Published: July 26. 2010 06:51AM




Campaigners praise passage of PATI bill





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By Sam Strangeways

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International transparency campaigners have praised Bermuda for doing the right thing and finally passing a freedom of information law.

Commentators who have followed the Island's path toward a more open, accountable government said they were pleased the Public Access to Information (PATI) Act 2010 was approved unanimously by MPs in the House of Assembly on Friday night.



Charles Davis, executive director of the US-based National Freedom of Information Coalition, told The Royal Gazette: "This is a landmark day for government transparency in Bermuda, a day that citizens should remember forever.

"The playing field between the governed and the governors just became much more level, and the result will be better performance, more civic input and greater democratic involvement.

"Everybody wins here except for those who wish to do the public's business in the dark."

Toby Mendel, from the Centre for Law and Democracy in Canada, said the fact that the bill had the support of all three political parties was very promising. "It shows that there is a wide base of support for it and that augurs well for the challenging task ahead. That support is really, really important to make sure that it has a good chance of success at the implementation stage."

Mr. Mendel, who analysed the draft legislation when it was first released last year and made a submission to Government, said the final version appeared to be "a very, very strong draft".

He added: "I think that for citizens it will be a fantastic tool and it should open up things in all kinds of ways. It will be a tool that will be used by a lot of different people."

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FULL ARTICLE: http://www.royalgazette.com/rg/Article/article.jsp?articleId=7da7d2730030025§ionId=60

Better oversight will serve police as well as public - TheChronicleHerald.ca

Better oversight will serve police as well as public - TheChronicleHerald.ca - TheChronicleHerald.ca


... via email communication between the RCMP and Halifax police that was obtained by the Wagmatcook band in response to an access-to-information request. ...

Privacy law helps the government hide (TimesColonist via the privacylawyer.ca)

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Privacy law helps the government hide

Les Leyne

Times Colonist

Thursday, November 26, 2009

When reporters were briefed a couple of weeks ago on how the Olympic torch relay would go down, they were told no identities of the runners would be supplied, because of "privacy law."
Apparently the people who eagerly volunteered to wear bright white suits while carrying burning torches in front of TV cameras and thousands of people wanted their privacy, along with all the fame and glory.

They wanted no such thing, of course. They were only too happy to joyously volunteer their names on their own. The edict was simply the decision of torch functionaries eager to exercise some of their authority. It was a good example of how privacy law has vastly enhanced officials' first inclination to say "no" to every request.

Quote of the day: "The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people." -- Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis

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Quote of the day

"The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people." -- Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis

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• Books Of the Times: How Brandeis, Revered or Hated, Became a Giant of the Supreme Court (nytimes.com)

Access to information: law and reality miles apart

Access to information: law and reality miles apart
By Dean Jobb
Halifax
Lawyers Weekly
March 06 2009 issue

Imagine a lawyer heading into court to argue a case without being able to read the court file or the documents being entered as evidence.

Now imagine a journalist trying to produce an accurate news story about a case without being allowed to review the file or see the exhibits.

Lawyers get to see the file, of course, but that’s not the case for reporters in many jurisdictions as court officials deny access based on outdated precedents and flawed legal interpretations that critics say undermine the principle of open justice.

There’s a growing chorus of complaint that access to key court documents — informations setting out criminal charges, exhibits tendered during trials, youth court dockets — has become increasingly restrictive, despite a growing body of Charter jurisprudence that demands greater openness. Understaffed court offices and lack of training for front-line officials compound the problem.

“You have to go through hoops — very time-consuming and expensive hoops — in a lot of cases” to get access, complains Tracey Tyler, The Toronto Star’s legal affairs reporter, who has been covering the courts for two decades.

FULL ARTICLE

Canada: Privacy Commissioner Orders Release of Camera Manuals

Canada: Privacy Commissioner Orders Release of Camera Manuals
Edmonton, Canada police lose a near three-year battle to conceal red light camera manuals from the public.

Manuals governing the operation and calibration of red light camera systems must be released to the public following a ruling issued earlier this month by Alberta, Canada's Office of The Information and Privacy Commissioner. The decision handed down by Adjudicator Teresa Cunningham put an end to a nearly three-year attempt by the Edmonton Police Service (EPS) to conceal the documents from a resident who used freedom of information laws to request records "relating to the operation of red light cameras."

Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), the private company that operated the cameras for Edmonton in return for a share of the profits, specifically refused to allow police to hand over Instruction Manuals IM-E0207 and IM-E0306, claiming these documents were protected by a confidentiality and copyright agreement with Gatsometer BV, the Dutch manufacturer of the automated ticketing hardware.

"To my knowledge any information provided by ACS or Gatsometer BV to the EPS would have been done pursuant to a contractual relationship and provided in confidence," an EPS affidavit explained.

The adjudicator seized on the phrase "would have been" to conclude that the department was speculating and did not have a concrete contractual provision stating the document must be kept confidential. Because ACS failed to produce sufficient evidence to prove that the company took the confidentiality requirement seriously, it was not exempt from the freedom of information law.

"I am not satisfied that there was ever an explicit agreement between ACS and EPS to maintain confidentiality of the manual," the adjudicator wrote. "The technical information in the manual is about installing, setting up, calibrating, and using equipment -- information one would also expect to find in a user's manual that is not intended to be confidential."

ACS also argued that disclosure of the manuals would reveal important trade secrets, including allowing competitors to determine its current pricing structure. The adjudicator rejected this argument as implausible because the red light cameras in question were developed in 1996 and the manual itself dated 2002. The commissioner suggested a competitor in 2009 was unlikely to improve its technology by looking at the operations manual for a thirteen-year-old machine. The adjudicator cited a UK ruling to dispense with the argument that placing a copyright notice on the manuals prohibited public access to the information.

"The fact that information may be someone's intellectual property does not of itself preclude its legitimate availability to others," the Information Commissioner of the United Kingdom ruled. "Just as library books may be protected by copyright, their public availability is not restricted because of that status."

The resident who made the original request for the manuals sought information that could have been useful in fighting red light camera tickets. EPS did not argue that its true motivation was to thwart challenges to its ticketing program.

"For the reasons above, I find that disclosure of the manual could not reasonably be expected to result in significant harm to the competitive position of ACS or Gatsometer," the adjudicator ruled. "I order the public body to disclose the records at issue to the applicant."

EPS must immediately hand over the manuals to requesting parties and must give evidence to the privacy commissioner by March 3, 2009 that it has complied with the directive. A copy of the ruling is available in a 110k PDF file at the source link below.

Source: Order F2008-018 (Alberta, Canada Information and Privacy Commissioner, 1/12/2009)