Declassification of Records

SillyString

SillyString

TNPer
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During the last election cycle, one element of my campaign touched on providing greater transparency into the operation of the Court, and making old, closed cases more accessible to the public.

The Court has agreed on a starting policy to review all threads older than one year, and release them unless there are compelling reasons to do otherwise. If you are interested in the record of a specific case, even if it is younger than one year, please file a request in this thread. Such requests will be granted or denied at our discretion after determining any continuing need for secrecy and ensuring sufficient privacy for justices to debate.

I have just taken the first step in this process, and moved several threads dating from 2006-2010 to the new declassified archive, which can be located here. This should be publicly visible - if there are any issues accessing it, please inform me or post directly in the Admin Requests thread.
 
Yikes, it looks like I used to do work around here after all. Too bad several smear campaigns against me consistently stated that I never did anything or just rambled and was ignored.

Odd.
 
I'm looking forward to the release of the Sanc/Abby/Punk court documents. I think many of those are a year old now.

Should make for some good reads.
 
Actually, the record release is an interesting and intriguing idea.

It could bring up some interesting legal and constitutional issues that could reverse existing decisions if a technical or evidentiary error was made. Wouldn't apply to not-guilty verdicts (as per Double Jeopardy issues), but would be fodder to reverse guilty verdicts which are excluded from Double Jeopardy issues.

We will now have a blossoming in the population of would-be Lawyers in the region! And think of the political hay that can be made in the process. Now that's a double edged sword depending upon motivational issues! :P


Oh, and it absolutely shows that Gracius Maximus has made great contributions for which he should be applauded.
 
This doesn't really have anything to do with declassification except improving access to already public information, but I didn't really want to make a new thread just for this:

I think the Rulings page should now be fully updated. Please let me know if there's a ruling you notice missing and I will add it in. :unsure:

Oh, I guess I also declassified a few more threads. Nothing terribly interesting, sorry. :P
 
Could the court give some guidance as to what is a reasonable time delay before a declassification would be considered?

There are one or two recent discussions I would be interested in seeing.
 
As of now, we are releasing threads which are over a year old. We have not explicitly discussed circumstances for the release of younger threads, so this is just me speaking, not the court, but I think I would be open to requests for specific items older than six months but younger than a year, maybe tentatively open to requests for specific items younger than six months but occurring prior to the current term, and not open to requests from within the current term due to the genuine benefit from a level of privacy.

But that's just me. I will bring it up with the other member (soon members) of the Court and get back to you. :)
 
SillyString:
As of now, we are releasing threads which are over a year old. We have not explicitly discussed circumstances for the release of younger threads, so this is just me speaking, not the court, but I think I would be open to requests for specific items older than six months but younger than a year, maybe tentatively open to requests for specific items younger than six months but occurring prior to the current term, and not open to requests from within the current term due to the genuine benefit from a level of privacy.

But that's just me. I will bring it up with the other member (soon members) of the Court and get back to you. :)
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Thanks for that. I will make a note in my diary for just under a year hence.
 
Just to follow up, the other members of the Court agreed with that instinct. We have released the following update to the Adopted Court Rules in order to codify our agreement:

Chapter 5: Declassification and Privacy

Section 1: Declassification of Records
  1. Private Court records, in either the Justices' private forum or the private archive, which reach one year of age will be relocated to the Declassified Justice Archive.
  2. Private Court records which have reached six months of age may be released early in the same manner when requested by an RA member.
  3. Private Court records which are younger than six months but predate the sitting Court may be requested by an RA member and released if the Court finds a compelling benefit to their publication.
  4. Private Court records from within the term of the sitting Court will not be released.
  5. Private Court records which pertain to open or ongoing cases will not be released, regardless of their age.
Section 2: Privacy of Information
  1. Information protected as private is defined as follows:
    • Real life information about any NationStates player from which there is a risk of inferring that player's real life identity and which has not willingly been disclosed to the public, including, but not limited to, an individual's name, IP address, physical address or location, phone number, place of employment or education, appearance, social media accounts, and other knowledge about a player, unless the player in question provides explicit consent for this information not to be considered private.
    • Real life information about any NationStates player for which there exists a reasonable real life expectation of privacy or discretion, including, but not limited to, health status, both mental and physical; financial status; personal tragedies; changes in personal status such as marriage, divorce, pregnancy, birth, or death; and other similar information, unless the player in question provides explicit consent for this information not to be considered private.
    • Information that, upon being made public, would jeopardize any ongoing military or intelligence operations; or jeopardize the security of units and agents participating in them, or be harmful to the diplomatic interests, military interests, or security of The North Pacific.
  2. The Court will not release Private information during its declassification process. This may take the form of withholding a thread in its entirety, or producing a copy of of the original thread with the Private information or posts redacted.
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