See related Politech article on giving police more rights than other people:
"Washington state senate moves to ban publishing info on police" http://www.politechbot.com/p-03131.html --- Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 08:24:10 -0500 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: "J.D. Abolins" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: NJ proposes to shield NJ State Police records Yesterday's (Wed) Newark, NJ Star Ledger carried a front page article about the proposal to designate as confidential certain information about NJ State Police troopers. Thus, the information will be shielded from public information requests just as NJ has enacted a significant change to the public info access laws. The proponents of this shielding claim it is to protect the privacy of the state troopers and their families. (Echoes of Kirkland, WA.) The shielding supporters also claim it is needed to give the state police an opportunity to work on itself to deal with issues such as the racial profiling. The proposal would also shield police cruiser videotapes from discovery in lawsuits brought by the public. It would not, however, shield the tapes and other information needed by defrense in criminal cases. The full article can be found for next few days at: http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-0/10141998094603.xml J.D. Abolins Meyda Online -- Infosec & Privacy Studies http://www.MeydaOnline.com ---------- Web page snippet ---------- State tries to shield records of troopers Tapes of traffic stops included in proposal Wednesday, February 20, 2002 BY ROBERT SCHWANEBERG Star-Ledger Staff Virtually all records on individual State Police officers, including the videotapes they make on patrol, would be confidential under a regulation proposed yesterday by the Attorney General's Office. The department said the new rule is needed to protect the privacy of state troopers and their families while allowing the State Police to take a hard look at itself as it works to eradicate racial profiling. [...] Critics, including representatives of the state's newspaper publishers and New Jersey Citizen Action, said the proposal goes too far and would shield information the public deserves to know. [...] The proposed regulation would primarily shield information the State Police are required to compile under a December 1999 consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice to end racial profiling. That includes the videotapes made of all highway stops. "If we had a blanket rule that they were public, we would lose the essential support of troopers that we need," Farmer said. [...] The rule also would block release of highway stop videotapes to people seeking to sue the State Police over discrimination or other alleged wrongdoing. They would need a judge's order to break through the confidentiality rule. The rule could not, however, block criminal defendants from getting information needed for their defense. [...] The move to close State Police records comes as the state is preparing to greatly expand public access to government records in general under a new law that goes into effect in July. That law allows records to be closed by regulation. <rest of article snipped> ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
