EFF: EFF asks California Supreme Court to hear case on anonymization and the ability to access data under the California Public Records Act.
EFF asks California Supreme Court to hear case on anonymization and the ability to access data under the California Public Records Act. EFF is filing an amicus letter in support of a petition for review, asking the California Supreme Court to overturn a harmful appellate court decision in Sander v. State Bar of California that could prevent people from requesting public records from databases that contain private information, even if the requesters specifically ask for private information to be anonymized. The First Appellate District issued an opinion in August that effectively rewrites the California Public Records Act (“CPRA”) in a way that could limit Californians’ access to the vast amount of public data that state and local agencies are generating on our behalf. The court ruled that requiring the State Bar of California to de-identify personal information that could be linked to specific bar applicants creates a “new record” because it requires the State Bar to “recode it...