Cali Police, Civil Liberties Groups Agreed on Transparency, Gov Brown Vetoed It

Gov Brown's criticism basically comes down to this: "The bill is too broad in scope...". Which I believe you can interpret in one of two ways, either Brown thinks that the technical burden on the agencies to post their policies is to great, or he thinks that not all of these things should be public information.

He goes on to say, "I appreciate the author's desire for additional transparency of police practices and other local law enforcement procedures, but I believe this goal can be accomplished with a more targeted and precise approach".

The with this statement is that the bill was targeted to specific agencies and was very precise in its requirements, so why did he shoot it down? I think that he didn't have any technical issues with the actual logistics of enforcing the bill, as he never mentions any of this in his veto. He must simply not want a higher level of transparency for these agencies.

What purpose would uploading a law enforcement agencies policies and training materials serve? I'm sorry, but with the limited information in this article, I agree with Gov. Brown on this one. ...and it's drafted by the EFF, who would likely use the article to voice their side of this discussion.

Disclosure: I'm a regular EFF donor. They're a great org.

The governor also just signed AB 840, sadly, which greatly weakens California's 1% manual post-election audit. The change was introduced at the last minute and exempts from the audit all ballots that are counted by machine after election night -- an estimated 30-40% of all ballots. Now malicious actors can just target those ballots.

Great job California! Keep up the reflexive defense of any and all institutions - that’s been working out great for us lately.