#sunshinelaw — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

Deflock Broward @[email protected] · 2026-02-24 · 19:59 UTC

Hello Mastodon! Deflock Broward here. We use public records to track license plate reader (ALPR) surveillance, then publish sources + plain-English explainers.

Starting with Weston: https://deflockbroward.org/weston

#DeflockBroward #Deflock #WestonFL #Broward #SouthFlorida #Florida #PublicRecords #SunshineLaw #OpenGovernment #Privacy #Surveillance #ALPR #LicensePlateReaders #FlockSafety

#deflockbroward #deflock #westonfl #broward #southflorida #florida

Josh Renaud @[email protected] · 2024-09-03 · 20:38 UTC

I love how the St. Louis city police department's redaction software can turn a 45 page PDF that contained only text into a 943MB file (!)

If I'm interpreting correctly, I think the issue is that a bunch of full-page redactions were applied by producing high-resolution (2308x3088) entirely-black bitmap images, instead of just drawing simple black vector rectangles.

#journalism #localjournalism #police #SunshineLaw #pdf #bloatware #datajournalism #foia

#foia #journalism #localjournalism #police #sunshinelaw #pdf

Josh Renaud @[email protected] · 2024-07-03 · 21:49 UTC

Meanwhile, the City of St. Louis took **142** days to fulfill my request for citywide pay data. They released the records only after I complained yesterday to the Personnel Dept.

In contrast, St. Louis County took just 7 days to fulfill a similar request.

The city's handling of Sunshine requests is very badly broken.

#stlouis #stl #localjournalism #journalism #transparency #sunshine #SunshineLaw #news

#stlouis #stl #localjournalism #journalism #transparency #sunshine

Josh Renaud @[email protected] · 2024-07-03 · 21:47 UTC

Chief Tracy of the St. Louis Police Department has lauded the new SLMPD website as “not only increas[ing] our transparency, but also hold[ing] us accountable to the community we serve.”

But when I requested emails about the site's redesign, the department's Sunshine Unit redacted almost all of them.

#stlouis #stl #localjournalism #journalism #news #transparency #foia #SunshineLaw #sunshine #police

#stlouis #stl #localjournalism #journalism #news #transparency

Josh Renaud @[email protected] · 2024-04-05 · 14:05 UTC

When typography and the judicial system collide.

#court #courts #lawsuit #sunshinelaw #stl #stlouis #justice #typography #fonts

#court #courts #lawsuit #sunshinelaw #stl #stlouis

Josh Renaud @[email protected] · 2024-03-18 · 20:29 UTC

Today, I reached a new personal all-time high for a Sunshine request estimate.

A local government told me it would cost $15,495 and take 750 hours to provide a database extract ... an extract I know can be performed in minutes with a one-line query.

#datajournalism #localjournalism #stl #stlouis #news #sunshineLaw

#datajournalism #localjournalism #stl #stlouis #news #sunshinelaw

Josh Renaud @[email protected] · 2024-02-23 · 19:39 UTC

This city's records request form is _terribly_ designed and ugly ... but at least there's no CAPTCHAs or other Javascript junk making it totally unusable.

#recordsrequests #foia #journalism #sunshineLaw #localjournalism