PUBLIC INFORMATION: Court Upholds Privacy of California's Taliban

Posted by Terry Francke, General Counsel | Dec 3, 2008 | Legal Issue: Public Information | 0 |

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press reports that a federal appeals court on Monday upheld a lower court's denial, on privacy grounds, of the Associated Press's request to the Justice Department under the Freedom of Information Act for a copy of the request by John Walker Lindh, a Marin County native serving a 20-year term for his activity in the Taliban, to reduce his prison sentence.

In a footnote, the court explained that the AP tried to negotiate with Lindh for redacted copies of the documents, to protect his privacy, but those negotiations failed because the news service wanted more than Lindh would provide.

That failure was telling, the court reasoned: Because AP is unsatisfied with Lindhs offer to release the petition redacted only to the extent necessary to protect his personal privacy and safety, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that AP seeks release of purely private information.

About The Editor

Terry Francke, General Counsel

Terry Francke has a 39-year history of helping journalists, citizens and public officials understand and use their First Amendment and open government rights. With CalAware, Francke has authored comprehensive and authoritative guidebooks to California law on access to government meetings and public records and the news gathering and publication rights of journalists. Focusing on these issues in public forum law, he supervises CalAware's legislative and litigation initiatives; conducts workshops on legal compliance; helps design public records audits; supports local sunshine ordinance drafting efforts; writes CalAware Today, a blog on current developments and proposals in the law and best practices; and answers countless queries by phone and e-mail from citizens, journalists, public officials and employees, and lawyers. Francke previously served 14 years as executive director and general counsel to the California First Amendment Coalition, after a 10-year post as legal counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association. He has served as an advisory panel member to the National Center on Courts and the Media; taught journalism law at the Department of Communication at Stanford University; and served as an expert contributor to the 1994 major revisions to the Ralph M. Brown Act and the 2004 ballot proposition making open government a basic right of citizens under the California Constitution. Francke is a 1967 graduate of the University of Notre Dame and a 1979 graduate of McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific. Prior to his legal career, Francke worked as a weekly newspaper editor and in military and local government public affairs positions.

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