Tales of Obtaining Public Records

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

San Francisco City Attorney's Office and Public Records

San Francisco Office of the City Attorney's HOME PAGE has a SECTION dedicated to informing the public (you, me, anybody who can access the internet) about San Francisco's Sunshine Ordinance and How to Obtain Public Records. From the face, it appears "transparency" is important to Dennis J. Herrera. ***You will also find a lot of documents pertaining to the Christmas Day Tiger Mauling Incident***San Francisco is a city marred with allegations of Police Corruption, misconduct, cover-up, etc. While I don't know the facts of the present situation being reported by SFGate regarding a rookie officer and domestic violence I do know that the City Attorney's Office has done a relatively good job with their Web 2.0 interface and easily accessible documents. The City Attorney's Good Government Guide for 2007-08 and the accompanying Good Government Guide Supplement are available to download. Officials are required to submit a Sunshine Declaration to the Ethics Commission in order to comply with the Sunshine Ordinance.

The City Attorney's Office even provides a lengthy explanation of how to obtain public records from the City. They also include a sample request here. While I don't know if this is all fluff or serious openness, but at least its public. Has anybody had any experience trying to get records from the City? Please comment and let me know.

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Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Brent Wilkes, Scott Peterson, Susan McDougal, Anthony Mark Bianchi

What do all these people have in common?

They were/are represented by Mark John Geragos of Geragos and Geragos. Thats right all the forenamed criminal defendants were/are represented by the same attorney the two Dhaliwal brothers immediately retained. When was the last time you could remember someone retaining a high-profile criminal defense attorney for an incident that allegedly didn't involve a crime?

According to the Union Tribune:

Federal probation officials are recommending that Brent Wilkes, the Poway defense contractor who was convicted of bribing former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, should be sentenced to 60 years in prison, according to court records.

TPMmuckraker says this about it:

Wilkes' lawyer Mark Geragos knows this is bad news, and so has asked for extra time to prepare a counter-argument. Among the things he objects to: the recommendation was based on the assumption that all $90 million of Wilkes' federal contracts were the result of bribing Duke Cunningham. Not so, says he (even though the jury convicted him on all thirteen counts). At least some of that he got fair and square. We look forward to him fighting that out.

Here's some info on Anthony Mark Bianchi certainly someone that I wouldn't let near my kids. Indictment
Superceeding Indictment
Motion to Dismiss
Motion for standby counsel
Motion for Sanctions

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Metadata from Digital Photos

Is there a way to get the juice from photos taken on a camera phone? According to Microsoft there is. I wonder how useful this would be in terms of obtaining the information on government phones? Phones paid for by people, and whether or not images were taken inappropriately. I realize it's a long shot, but I'll have to test the tool and see how reliable it is. This could be a real asset for digital discovery.
Welcome to Microsoft Photo Info 1.0.

From Out-of-the-box lawyering: Metadata in photos: There’s a lot of hidden information in digital photos
Here is a link to the download (must have a valid Window's install).

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Thursday, January 17, 2008

FUGITIVE AT LARGE

This is a story about my friend's daughter. Please take the time to read it and help if possible. Julio Guevara-Mejia is a COWARD, and he needs to be caught. Americas Most Wanted has the story. Or contact her dad DAVE at his myspace page.