CfA's March 18, 2022 Newsletter

This Week:

• BLOG: How NOT to Write an Open Records Law: In our latest blog post, we run through some of the most outrageous state public records laws, which have been deliberately designed to stifle transparency efforts. Highlights include:
  • Georgia's law exempting members of the state legislature and offices housed therein from any state records requests.
  • Michigan's law prohibiting currently incarcerated individuals that have been charged with a felony offense from requesting any records from the state.
  • Alabama's complete lack of time requirements for public officers to surrender records. Without a definite timeline, state records custodians can de facto deny records requests by letting enough time elapse for the requestor to either give up or forget. 

• The Tech Transparency Project's (TTP) report detailing five Amazon suppliers that have been linked directly or indirectly to forced labor of ethnic minorities from China’s Xinjiang region was an expansion of our work highlighting similar labor abuse with Apple.
  • After NBC News covered the report, it was picked up by over a dozen other outlets in the first 24 hours, including The Hill, The Independent, The Verge, Engadget, and Forbes India in English, and in at least five other languages around the world.
  • Read the report here.

• The New York Times covered TTP's report on Apple Inc.'s trademark "bullying" exposed the company's legal targeting of small businesses and nonprofits across the country, often in unrelated fields, for potential trademark infringement. 
  • In the last three years, Apple has filed more than double the number of trademark oppositions (185) than Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook combined (81). The company’s targets have included a custom stationary business, a school district, and a nonprofit group that works with autistic children.
  • Read the report here.

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