Assignment 10: Freedom of Information

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a United States federal law that grants the public access to information possessed by government agencies. Upon written request, U.S. government agencies are required to release information unless it falls under one of nine exemptions listed in the Act.

The Associated Press through reviewed federal data found that the government is placing children found stranded on the border with adults who are in the country illegally. It was stated that this has been going on since the year 2014. They made no comment how often the adults in question has legal papers. Of course the children are placed with family or friends of the family but that doesn’t really clear the air. All of the information was able to be pertained because of the Freedom of Information Act.

“In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the Department of Health and Human Services provided data showing that 80 percent of the 71,000 mostly Central American children placed between February 2014 and September 2015 were sent to sponsors who were not here legally.”

Out of the children 6 percent were placed with adults who had temporary protected status, a U.S. government program that has let some Central American citizen’s stay and work in the country legally for more than a decade. Four percent were sponsored by American citizens and 1 percent by immigrants facing deportation proceedings. Many of the children were placed with sponsors who had some form of legal status or who have filed immigration applications.

It was stated that Immigration status is not a factor in determining whether someone can sponsor a child, which I believe is true. But sponsors are asked their status, and those in the country illegally must provide a backup plan to care for the children if they are deported.

During the 20-month period covered by the data, more than half of unaccompanied children were released to a parent. Many others were placed with siblings, aunts and uncles.

Potential sponsors must provide proof of identity and their relationship to the child and undergo screening and background checks. In some cases, the department's Office of Refugee Resettlement conducts a home study to determine if the placement is safe.

The office has collected information about sponsors' immigration status since at least 2005, the Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement. Sponsors who are not the children's parents also are fingerprinted.

The statistics were culled from a database created in January 2014, according to the department.

 It’s important for us as American to know when things like this are happening in our country. That’s why the Freedom of Information Act is so important.

http://www.michigansthumb.com/news/article_eb51801e-06fe-11e6-ac00-87b93e63bf21.html 

Assignment 9: College Media

Student journalism is an important part of student life on many campuses. For one it keep the student body informed on not only social event but also on the important topics. The university is required to give certain information when requested upon by the journalism organization, when they don’t hand over the information it can cause real problems. For today’s blog I chose to talk about Florida University and what happened to them when they tried to withhold information from their students.

A student news organization is battling a Florida university for the right to know the names of Student Government officials in meetings and documents. On Friday, Knight News, Inc., a student newspaper, won against the University of Central Florida in a court case that began in 2013.
The court found that a previous court should have required UCF to reveal the names of Student Government officials accused of engaging in misconduct in impeachment documents.

Previously, both the trial court and the appellate court supported the university’s claim that it could cover the names of students in Student Government documents because of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, said Justin Hemlepp, an attorney for Knight News.
“If UCF somehow had won this or still finds a way to do so, it will force every other Student Government in this state at a public university or community college to shut down their records to the public, to shut down their meetings to the public,” he said. “And all the sudden all of these Student Governments will be operating in secrecy.”
The university could not be reached for comment. Also not helping their case in the end.
In court documents, the university stated that FERPA protects the rights of student information, including SG officials.In March, Knight News filed another lawsuit against UCF after the university closed an election commissions meeting to the public. The paper is arguing that Florida’s Sunshine Law allows public access to public officials, including those in SG.
In addition to the two cases filed by Knight News, Jacob Milich, a student who attempted to run for UCF Student Body president, also filed a case against the university.UCF’s elections commission removed him from the ballot following a closed-to-the-public meeting, he said.

The 25-year-old Marine veteran said he offered to drop the lawsuit if he was put back on the ballot for the elections. The university declined, he said.

Assignment 8: Investigative Journalism

Investigative Journalism

Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, such as serious crimes, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend months or years researching and preparing a report.

I chose to look in to a story on the New York Times website entitled Revealed: The NSA’s Secret Campaign to Crack, Undermine Internet Security. This story would not have broken without some investigative journalism. It’s important that the public to know about stories like this because their personal information could be at risk without them even knowing about it.

“The National Security Agency is winning its long-running secret war on encryption, using supercomputers, technical trickery, court orders and behind-the-scenes persuasion to undermine the major tools protecting the privacy of everyday communications in the Internet age, according to newly disclosed documents.” Many users assume — or have been assured by Internet companies — that their data is safe from prying eyes, including those of the government, and the N.S.A. wants to keep it that way. The agency treats its recent successes in deciphering protected information as among its most closely guarded secrets, restricted to those cleared for a highly classified program code-named Bullrun, according to the documents, provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor.

The N.S.A., which has specialized in code-breaking since 1952, sees that task as essential to its mission. If it cannot decode the messages of terrorists, foreign spies and other rivals, the United States will be at serious risk. But some experts say the N.S.A.’s campaign to bypass and weaken communications security may have serious unintended consequences. They say the agency is working at cross-purposes with its other major mission, apart from eavesdropping: ensuring the security of American communications. This could be very hazardous to the safety of Americans in some people’s eyes. It’s kind of like a door once you open it can’t be closed.

By introducing such back doors, the N.S.A. has secretly accomplished what it had failed to do in the open. Two decades ago, officials grew concerned about the spread of strong encryption software like Pretty Good Privacy, or P.G.P., designed by a programmer named Phil Zimmermann. The Clinton administration fought back by proposing the Clipper Chip, which would have effectively neutered digital encryption by ensuring that the N.S.A. always had the key.

But by 2006, an N.S.A. document notes, the agency had broken into communications for three foreign airlines, one travel reservation system, one foreign government’s nuclear department and another’s Internet service by cracking the virtual private networks that protected them. By 2010, the Edgehill program, the British counter encryption effort, was unscrambling VPN traffic for 30 targets and had set a goal of an additional 300.

But the agencies’ goal was to move away from decrypting targets’ tools one by one and instead decode, in real time, all of the information flying over the world’s fiber optic cables and through its Internet hubs, only afterward searching the decrypted material for valuable intelligence.