Illustration by Caetano Santos.

Every website you’ve ever visited, every email you’ve ever sent or received and everything you’ve shared through social media is recorded and memorized. California Assembly Bill AB 1291, also called the “Right to Know” Act, will provide technology and internet users a glimpse into what the companies who collect this data know about them as well as the right to know who else this information has been sold or handed over to.

Here at City on a Hill Press we understand how important it is for individuals to have access to their visible public profile in our ubiquitously digital age. We support the passage of California’s AB 1291 and the ideology of internet freedom and the safety it represents. This ideology extends beyond the necessity of manageable privacy and easy access to info sold to purveyors of targeted ads. The utility and locus of control over this information must be shifted into the hands of its creators and patrons.

Companies will inevitably point to obscure fine print in their terms and conditions asserting ownership over all submitted content. Aside from giving websites the right to sell stats on the products you like and your personal inclinations, these contracts often act as renouncements of ownership over anything uploaded and shared. Accessibility must be the right to know what one is agreeing to share.

With the great number of new websites people let into their lives on a daily basis, the amount of time required to read and interpret even one of these policies is unsustainable. A word count on every section of Facebook’s data use policy and privacy instructions clocks in at 9,365 words. The real issue here is the manageability of one’s personal portrait.

The average citizen can’t be expected to have the time to keep track of everything they write or post and who it could possibly belong to. With the knowledge of what’s already recorded about their lives, users can make more informed decisions about what they publish, what websites they open up to and how they conduct themselves online.

Greater freedom of information is not something that should be subjected to the sluggishness of state politics. The United Kingdom’s 15-year old Data Protection Act gives the nation’s tech users the ability to control one’s public personal data — surely an issue so immediately invested in social safety and human security could and should be implemented federally in the United States.

CHP advocates a call for greater freedom of digital information. California’s Right to Know Act is more than a step in the right direction — it has the ability to usher in a more informed and aware digital public. The right to know is an inherent prerequisite to a functioning democratic system.

Illustration by Louise Leong

The Sacramento Bee and the Los Angeles Times are suing the University of California Board of Regents for the names of all police officers involved in the November pepper spray incident at UC Davis. City on a Hill Press fully supports the publications’ joint effort, especially given the general lack of transparency endemic in the UC system.

For a week or so leading up to Thanksgiving last year, all eyes were on UC Davis, perhaps for the first time. The campus previously considered a sleepy, docile cousin to UCs Santa Cruz and Berkeley had been rocked by a scandal involving the brutal pepper-spraying of several seemingly peaceful protesters.

The Bee and the Times, along with scores of other news outlets, were quick to report the names of then-UCD police chief Annette Spicuzza, as well as Lt. John Pike, the only pepper-spraying officer caught on tape.

But any hopes the newspapers had of running the names of all officers involved in the decision and action of pepper-spraying were dashed when the Federated University Police Officers Association, the union representing campus police officers, won a lawsuit that effectively redacted the names of all officers but Spicuzza and Pike in the task force study of the incident, released in April.

The regents stuck to this redaction, ignoring the publications’ requests through the California Public Records Act for all the names.

The UC failing to provide public records — sound familiar? It should, given that just last year, non-profit organization Californians Aware gave the UC system an average score of 46 out of 100 in its compliance with public records requests — an “  F.”  If releasing public records was a class, the university wouldn’t pass.

On this issue, City on a Hill can very much relate to its more senior newspapers. In October of 2009, former City on a Hill reporter Dana Burd requested public records from UCSC pertaining to the budget, and was met with much bureaucratic stalling.

“[The administration] didn’t treat it as a responsibility they had, but a hardship,” Burd said.

Burd didn’t receive all the information she requested until 2011, after persisting with several follow-up emails.

Burd’s request was to UCSC specifically, while the Bee and Times are suing the central Board of Regents. Regardless, it’s heartening to see newspapers that have the resources to do so demand action.

“ [T]he idea that government agents can anonymously plan and execute operations using chemical weapons against protesters in the public square is antithetical to the most fundamental notions of democracy, which depend upon public scrutiny of official conduct,”  reads the suit, filed May 23 in the Sacramento Superior Court. “  The regents’ withholding of the names of the officers also contradicts California law, which requires officers to wear name tags on their uniforms.”

We look forward to covering the results of this lawsuit, and will remain in strong support of any entity that challenges the UC to lawfully comply with all public records requests. After all, the word “public”  is right in the name — clearly, we all have a right to know.