Hello Mastodon! Deflock Broward here. We use public records to track license plate reader (ALPR) surveillance, then publish sources + plain-English explainers.

Starting with Weston: https://deflockbroward.org/weston

#DeflockBroward #Deflock #WestonFL #Broward #SouthFlorida #Florida #PublicRecords #SunshineLaw #OpenGovernment #Privacy #Surveillance #ALPR #LicensePlateReaders #FlockSafety

@Krustinaut @stuttgart +1

IMHO sollten alle Informationen staatlicherseits frei verfügbar sein außer es gäbe hinreichend triftige Gründe warum dies nicht sein sollte (bspw. halte ich es für falsch Notrufe per "#SunshineLaw" öffebtlich gerfügbar zu machen)…

• #Paywalling gehört grundsätzlich für behördliche Angaben verboten und allenfalls eine dem Umfang angemessene Bearbeitungsgebühr für Druck und Versand bei postralischem Duplikat-Wunsch erlaubt. (Vgl. €50 für den Ringbuchordner inklusive Ergänzungslieferungen der @BNetzA mit #Frequenznutzungsplan samt Zuteilungen anstelle des kostenlosen #PDFs auf deren Webseite: https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Fachthemen/Telekommunikation/Frequenzen/Grundlagen/Frequenzplan/start.html )

I love how the St. Louis city police department's redaction software can turn a 45 page PDF that contained only text into a 943MB file (!)

If I'm interpreting correctly, I think the issue is that a bunch of full-page redactions were applied by producing high-resolution (2308x3088) entirely-black bitmap images, instead of just drawing simple black vector rectangles.

#journalism #localjournalism #police #SunshineLaw #pdf #bloatware #datajournalism #foia

Chief Tracy of the St. Louis Police Department has lauded the new SLMPD website as “not only increas[ing] our transparency, but also hold[ing] us accountable to the community we serve.”

But when I requested emails about the site's redesign, the department's Sunshine Unit redacted almost all of them.

#stlouis #stl #localjournalism #journalism #news #transparency #foia #SunshineLaw #sunshine #police

When typography and the judicial system collide.

#court #courts #lawsuit #sunshinelaw #stl #stlouis #justice #typography #fonts

Today, I reached a new personal all-time high for a Sunshine request estimate.

A local government told me it would cost $15,495 and take 750 hours to provide a database extract ... an extract I know can be performed in minutes with a one-line query.

#datajournalism #localjournalism #stl #stlouis #news #sunshineLaw

This city's records request form is _terribly_ designed and ugly ... but at least there's no CAPTCHAs or other Javascript junk making it totally unusable.

#recordsrequests #foia #journalism #sunshineLaw #localjournalism

DeSantis is squeezing the sunshine out of Florida’s public records law, critics say

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/desantis-florida-public-records-transparency-rcna91364

#DeSantis #Florida #PublicRecordsLaw #Transparency #Critics #SunshineLaw #Politics #News