EFF Calls California AG's Reversed Policy on Locked Wiretap Data ‘Small' Victory

California Attorney General Kamala Harris’ office reversed a recent policy decision that would have “locked down data collected by California Department of Justice (CADOJ),” wrote Electronic Frontier Foundation Investigative Researcher Dave Maass in a blog post. “This is a small but important victory, since the attorney general currently writes [California Public Records Act] CPRA guidelines for the rest of the state.” In May, the CADOJ denied EFF’s request for “machine-readable, alternative versions of the California Electronic Interceptions Report,” a data set that details costs and effectiveness of wiretaps across the state, Maass said Friday. The PDF version online was difficult to break down and analyze, he said. A CADOJ lawyer said “under new security protocols, the office would provide only copies in a ‘locked PDF’ format in order to preserve the ‘integrity of the data,’” Maass said. He said the policy “was essentially slapping digital rights management on public records,” so the EFF was “happy to receive an email from the attorney general’s office” shortly after the foundation wrote a blog post in May detailing its concerns, saying there was an internal misunderstanding. “Although we've sought further explanations for a month now, CADOJ representatives have provided only vague answers,” Maass said. EFF continues to monitor state-level legislation that would create statewide rules for open data, including the creation of a formal chief data officer position that would write formal open data guidelines in consultation with the AG, Maass said.