A unanimous Illinois Supreme Court opinion has dealt a major blow to attempts at strengthening freedom of information rules, leading transparency advocates to suggest government bodies statewide will now be empowered to essentially shield troves of data from public access.
Justice Lisa Holder White wrote the opinion, issued May 18, reversing the initial ruling of a Cook County Circuit Court judge and Illinois First District Appellate Court opinion in favor of journalist Matt Chapman.
Chapman had sought to compel the Chicago Department of Finance to release certain records concerning the enforcement of parking, red light and speed camera tickets.
Lisa Holder White, Illinois Supreme Court Justice
| Supreme Court of Illinois
Chapman, a freelance journalist, submitted his initial request under the Freedom of Information Act in August 2018 for work on the city’s Citation Administration and Adjudication System, or CANVAS, which IBM developed for the city in 2002. Specifically, Chapman requested an “index of the tables and columns within each table of CANVAS” and the “column data type as well.”
The finance department declined his request, saying public dissemination of the requested information would jeopardize city security systems. With Chapman’s lawsuit still in circuit court, the city argued granting Chapman’s request would “provide a detailed roadmap of the entire CANVAS system to the public” and, if released, “would not only provide information about how the CANVAS system was designed but would also facilitate cyber-attacks.”
Bruce Coffing, Chicago’s chief information officer, gave testimony indicating the “information includes, among other things, first and last names of the primary and secondary vehicle owners, driver’s license numbers, addresses, handicap-parking status, the ticket issuer, and payment method,” Holder White wrote. But, she added, “On cross-examination, Coffing acknowledged plaintiff’s FOIA request did not seek actual data, such as a person’s driver’s license number, but instead sought a listing of the tables in the CANVAS database and the fields and columns within those tables.”
The circuit court judge relied on the testimony of Thomas Ptacek, a researcher of technological vulnerability, who said the type of data Chapman sought “would be of marginal value to an attacker,” and ruled the finance department hadn’t met its burden to prove its right to withhold the requested data. On appeal, the city restated its insistence the data in question is a “file layout” and posed a security risk, but that panel agreed the city failed to prove its exemption from disclosure obligations.
But the Supreme Court sided with the city, finding the state privacy law expressly includes file layouts as exempt from disclosure along with “any other information that, if disclosed, would jeopardize the security of the system or its data or the security of materials exempt” in that part of the law.
“While it is true that, under FOIA, public records are presumed to be open and accessible, the legislature has specifically provided for a narrow exemption with respect to administrative or technical information associated with automated data processing operations,” Holder White wrote.
After determining file layouts are exempt, the Court then agreed the requested documents fall under that description, saying “dictionary definitions establish the requested records fall under the exemption.”
The Supreme Court reversed the lower court rulings and remanded the lawsuit, prompting responses from pro-transparency corners.
“At a time when the need for government accountability is greater than ever, the Illinois Supreme Court with this ruling has taken a step backward,” said David Greising, Better Government Association president. “The language of the court’s ruling may seem narrow, but its implications are vast. The ruling will have the effect of blocking access to public records. They are called public records for a reason, and creating hurdles to access is not in the public interest. The BGA’s policy team will work with good-government protectors in the General Assembly to develop legislation that will repair the damage done by the Supreme Court’s ruling.”
Chapman took to Twitter in the wake of the opinion’s publication, writing: “Still need to collect my thoughts on this. This is such a disappointing loss for transparency in Illinois and will allow agencies to hide so much information.”
He added that the finance department once “released to me the home addresses of the owners of tens of millions of cars in parking ticket data. This is information that I will not share with anyone and it's deeply troubling that they released it. They've also given me the license plate of every car that's received a ticket. So for (the department) to argue that the privacy of individuals would be hampered by the release of a database schema is unbelievably shallow.”