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Somerville really doesn't want to give the Globe the names and addresses of residential parking-permit holders
By adamg on Tue, 06/16/2015 - 8:44pm
Somerville yesterday asked a federal judge to keep the state from making it hand over the names, addresses and phone numbers of Somerville residents with parking permits to a Globe reporter.
In a lawsuit filed in US District Court in Boston, the city says handing over the data would be "a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy" of permit holders. The Secretary of State's office disagrees.
At issue is a request Globe reporter Todd Wallack made last October seeking the records of all residential parking-permit holders in Somerville. In response, the city said it would provide some of the information - but not the first names, last names, addresses, Zip codes, e-mail addresses and phone numbers of permit holders.
Wallack appealed to the Secretary of State's office, which has now twice ordered the city to hand over the data - most recently on June 5.
The city says this violates the Driver Protection Privacy Act, which limits information that can be made publicly available about motorist records, as well as a section of the state Public Records Law related to data that provides "intimate detail of a highly personal nature."
The Secretary of State's office, however, says the driver privacy law only applies to records maintained by the Registry of Motor Vehicles, not cities and towns, and that there is nothing "intimate," in the data, such as "marital status, paternity, substance abuse, government assistance, family disputes and reputation."
In contrast, "names, addresses and telephone numbers are regularly available to the public through other sources such as voter lists and census records," so disclosure of the records to the Globe is mandated by the Public Records Law, state Supervisor of Records Shawn Williams wrote the city.
In its suit, the city replies:
By turning over the first name, last name, address, zip code, phone numbers, and email addresses of permit holders acquired by the City in connection with motor vehicle related permits, the City would effectively be turning over the same information for which the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act contemplated non-disclosure, thereby frustrating the purpose of the Act.
Beyond the privacy issues, the city argues releasing the data would violate the equal-protection clause of the US constitution - and its state equivalent, "by creating an unlawful classification between drivers based upon whether they afford themselves of the privilege of obtaining a resident parking permit."
In addition to asking the state be permanently enjoined from making the city turn over the information, the city suit asks a judge to bar any action on release of the data until the suit is settled.
Neighborhoods:
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| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 Somerville's complaint | 30.04 KB |
| Wallack's request | 244.27 KB |
| Somerville's reply to his request | 675.73 KB |
| State's order to release the data | 794.52 KB |
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Comments
I'm sure...
This is an attempt for more Globe Direct deliveries!
I'm glad the city is taking this on
I'm one of those Somerville residential parking sticker holders. Why does the Globe need my data, exactly?
It is kind of puerile and dubious.
How much more click bait can be squeezed out of "Massholes cheat on things?"
How much more outrage can be stoked?
It does seem like a bit of barrel bottom scraping in a slow news cycle period. And an astute reporter could just as well make a stats case like 538 does. The multi resident roommate housing situation would tend to be an anomaly to examine as it is more common due to high rents.
It's like the Globe is too busy with this chicken shit to apply these investigative skills to things like land giveaways
And what teapot tempest outrage will be next?
By way of disclaimer, I don't own a car, never have and never will nor do I drive so I don't have a pooch in this fight.
Walking and chewing gum - not mutually exclusive
A paper with the resources and mandate of the Globe should be (and is) capable of pursuing mulitple investigations. I agree that the actions of the BRA have probably drained more money from Boston pockets than excess parking permits will ever pull from Somerville ones, but it's not an either-or choice.
(Also - to get meta here for a moment - your unverifable statement as to what dogs you do or do not own, has exactly zero pertinence to the validity of your arguments. As an unregistered anon, you have no reputation capital. I could just as easily claim that you own two cars, four parking stickers, a fake handicap permit, and work for both the Herald and a Romanian identity theft ring. Derp.)
Well
If that's the case, when are they going to cover the Patrick slush fund story?
When the phone doesn't ring....
That will be the Globe, exposing Deval.
Parking permits
Since a reader asked...
I requested the data last year because I wanted to analyze how Somerville's residential parking program is working (or not working as the case may be).
When I obtained similar data from the City of Boston last year, I discovered hundreds of households had signed up for 4 or more permits. One couple in the South End had a 11 permits. One woman in the North End had a half dozen just in her name alone. I also discovered that some of the permit holders no longer lived at the address listed with the city, raising questions of whether non-residents were using them to park in Boston. It turned out the city had no idea this was happening and vowed to review the program and consider capping the number of permits per household or other changes.
It's worth noting Somerville already provides residents' names, addresses, and other information upon request in voter lists, resident lists, property assessment data ...etc. And I assured the city I had no plans to post the database online or share it with any Globe marketing people. But apparently, the city really, really does not want me to find out how many parking permits Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone and other residents hold.
I honestly can't think of another example when a city in Massachusetts has filed a federal lawsuit to avoid complying with a public records request. But it's worth noting that this is the same city that billed a blogger $200,000 for information about parking tickets and the city's response to complaints.
If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact me directly at [email protected] or 617-929-2069. And - full disclosure - I live in Somerville and have a grand total of one residential parking permit.
The level of entitlement
The level of entitlement shown in the quotes in your article from people who hog public land while paying zero dollars to park their ridiculous number of vehicles is breathtaking. Thanks for bringing their selfishness to light.
Dont hate the player, hate the game..
The entire RPP program is broken and should be fixed. However, what do you expect from the individuals when when the land is poorly managed and offered cheaply?
Treat the cause, not the symptoms. The RPP economics led to this...
I expect people to not hog
I expect people to not hog public land, thereby screwing over their neighbors. And I expect them to not double down and scream "I PAY MY TAXES!" when they are called out on their selfishness(do they think they are the only ones in their neighborhood who pay property taxes?!?). That is not asking much.
Here we have someone who
Here we have someone who doesn't pay much in taxes yet. How dare the people who pay the bills think they should have a say in how their money is spent!
Worth noting
It's also worth noting that this is the same newspaper which, when I asked permission to include an article of theirs in the newsletter I edited for a small sports club, demanded $5000 for the privilege. The article in question had been written as a first-person account of the reporter's experiences on an expedition with our club, which we mounted specifically for her benefit. All expenses were paid by members of the club; she went for free.
Ingrates.
Good for Somerville.
Somerville = public municipality ; Globe = private enterprise
Got it?
ad hominem attacks rule at uhub!
Why let the actual issue at hand influence your position when you can decide by the parties involved? Screw reason!
You can park there too. Be a
You can park there too. Be a resident and get a parking permit.
You are missing the point in
You are missing the point in a huge way. There are thousands more permits than there are parking spaces, in part because of rich turds using public land to store their many sports cars and motorcycles, so not everyone can find a spot.
Or
Free enterprise at work? Perhaps they get the extra permits and sell them to commuters coming in from outside the city?
Can't sell parking permits
They have to stay on the car they are purchased for, and that car has to belong to the permit holder and be "garaged" in Somerville.
I used to know a kid
who made a nice side selling visitor permits back in the day.
Newfangled computer thingies
That doesn't work anymore. The permit sticker is electronically linked to the plate number.
Guest Permits
I thought Somerville had "Guest Permits", one per household, so that visiting guests could park (for one day) in a resident spot?
They do, and you can get more
They do, and you can get more than one per household, but they do cost money.
You can get two visitor
You can get two visitor permits in Somerville.
You can also buy multiple passes for a one-time event, like a house party.
Phone numbers and email address are public information?
First of all, my focus is on privacy, not permits. I agree that sunshine may be the best disinfectant, however, this seems a little extreme. I do not provide this information to anyone unless I want to, or have to provide that point of contact for a service.
A cold call or random email borders on spam/harassment.
Outside of opting out of a government service (or permit), how would you suggest protecting against this unwanted contact? Is this just the new normal, something we will have to live with?
Just have to create another spoof email/phone number to remember, I guess...
Running a VPN? Browsing with Tor?
If you're not, you probably have a lot more to be concerned about than some reporter who is trying to expose parking hogs.
Uh
The lesser of two evils is not, in point of fact, a good.
false equivalance
The primary function of adresses and phone numbers is to serve as a public point of contact for individuals and organizations. As such they are fundamentally public, not private, information.
Birth dates, SSNs, medical data, browser histories, et al - these are examples of the type of information which is private and deserves protection.
Confused outrage does nothing to safeguard identity integrity. If anything, it discourages careful and deliberate action to that end.
Think about this
Address, DATE OF BIRTH, voting history, and many other bits of personal information are already available to any Tom, Dick, or Harry who walks in the door. I think this is egregious, by the way, especially the DOB thing.
But now the Globe wants to add email address, vehicle, make, model, etc to this grand database they're putting together, but promise not to release.
All so they can do a misleading story about a high number of permits per address, probably while not making clear that most addresses in Somerville are multi-person houses so of course there will be lots of permits per address? IT'S CLICKBAIT GOLD, JERRY!
Yeah, I'm not cool with that.
It's also totally idiotic
If there are multiple cars at a given address, which happens even with single family residences, then it's only logical that multiple permits would be issued for said address.
But leave it to the Glob(e) to try to manufacture a controversy where none exists. And this "Well, I'm entitled to receive this information just because you're a public entitiy" is nothing more than sheer arrogance.
And don't get me started on how moronic the concept of tracking a person's voting history is.
Remember when the phone
Remember when the phone company used to send out a book with the phone number and address of every phone customer?
Opt Out
Remember when the phone company let you opt-out of sharing your name, address, and/or phone number?
You PAID to "opt-out"
It's not ancient history, but if you had a phone and didn't want to be listed you had to PAY a monthly fee of a couple of bucks to not be in there.
And yes the vast majority of residential listings used to have the street name and number. That's so you can tell which of the 40 John O'Malley's was the one you wanted to call.
I don't remember them having
I don't remember them having addresses for residential numbers, but I do remember that my number was never listed in it, at first because we opted out, and then because we didn't have a home phone.
It wasn't as big a deal to get unwanted calls on a home phone, but nowadays most people (at least that I know) only have cell phones, and don't want to waste minutes. I also don't want to be stepping out at work to answer a personal call, only to find out it's a telemarketer.
People are rightfully a lot more protective of their cell phone numbers.
"Waste minutes?"
You mean there are carriers out there who still charge for usage by the minute? This isn't the 1990s.
Yes, minutes
Many people still pay by the minute because plans work best when you have a lot of people to cover. If it is just you, and you don't use the phone for everything, it makes far more sense to go to a prepaid minutes plan.
Lower income people (or thrifty single people who don't need their phone for work) find this far more economical.
"hundreds of households had
"hundreds of households had signed up for 4 or more permits"
What about roommate situations? There's plenty of houses/apartments with 4 unrelated residents living in them, they wouldn't be reasonably expected to share cars. (I can't imagine that insurance nightmare.)
Somerville technically has a
Somerville technically has a limit of no more than 4 unrelated individuals sharing a living space. It doesn't mean that people might not have more than one vehicle, but it could be a sign of a sloppily run process for taking people off the rolls.
Or, it could be that there is a natural overlap that happens as people move in and out of apartments since residents don't have to report their moves to City Parking and simply assume it's taken care of when they change registration.
As a 20 year Somerville resident, I don't see a lot of "registration with a friend's address to get a parking spot," because of the higher insurance costs in Somerville compared to the 'burbs.I do see more "registered in NH or ME" cars with Somerville driveway spots and folks who have moved out of Somerville using the permit until it expires.
Please, write this article
As a Somerville resident with a family of four who can't even get one permit, because our only vehicle is also used for my business, I'd like to see how many people are hoarding multiple permits. The city charges next to nothing for them, so there's zero incentive not to keep a car (or many) in the street.
Globe continues to try to make everyone hate them
Don't try to tell me that the Globe has run out of targets for corruption investigation in Boston, and so is down to the finishing touches on eradicating regional wrongdoing, by determining who has parking permits in Somerville.
No one wants their private information handed over to one of their reporter neighbors and the increasingly-tarnished Globe.
Everyone has the right to request public data!
Our tax dollars pay to collect, organize, and store data, so we are entitled to it for a small fee, except for some limited cases spelled out in state and federal laws. The fact that the Boston Globe in the instance did the requesting is immaterial. People like you are completely distracted by it and should not be. We all have a right to the data and the state said so. I'd love to know how many permits Mayor Joe Curtatone, his relatives and friends have! What is the city trying to hide????
Here is an overview article on data cities make public: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4174913/pdf/big.2014.0020.pdf
Here is all the data San Francisco makes public: https://data.sfgov.org/
If the entire purpose of this
If the entire purpose of this records request is to shed light on misuse of residential parking permits, then why do you need names, addresses, and phone numbers? It sounds like the city was willing to give you the data anonymized, which should have been enough, unless maybe you were concerned with multiple people holding permits for the same address, which, frankly, is none of your business.
While I don't live in Somerville, my boyfriend does, and one of his roommates has a parking permit. I don't personally have a stake in this, but it seems to be to be a clear violation of people's privacy.
Multiple permits, same household
It's definitely an issue. If there's a lot of this going on, as there is in Boston, it means that the city should be charging progressively higher fees for permits on a 2nd, 3rd, 4th car etc. It's not about invading privacy, it's about better public policy.
The city could provide an anonymous "household ID" column to tie together multiple permits at the same address, but I don't see that in their offer.
You're right, SC. Somerville
You're right, SC. Somerville did not offer to provide anonymized data or statistics. The city didn't even contact me to figure out if there was a compromise before filing a federal lawsuit.
The fact is this is not about names, addresses and other information on residents. I understand Somerville routinely provides that data in the form of voter records, list of city residents, property assessment records, dog tag licenses...etc. The city has even posted much of the property assessment records (with owners' names and addresses) on its web site in a searchable database. For some reason, the city just didn't want me to find out who was stockpiling parking permits.
But why? Someone before
But why? Someone before mentioned roommates. I share an apartment with 2 other people. There is no way in hell I would share a car with them, and why would it be fair to charge each of us different rates if we wanted a parking permit?
I guess that would be a reason the Globe might want names attached, rather than just permits per household, but it could still be easily anonymized. I assumed when the city offered to provide "some information" it included some anonymous field that tied things together.
Why?
Why does the US Census Bureau exist? Because lots of public benefit can be derived from the data.
The RMV may have one idea of how many cars are registered in Somerville, while parking permits present a completely different and larger number of how many vehicles are on Somerville roads and needs. Should the City be getting more Ch. 90 funding, for example?
Addresses are vital to know the density of parking demand, where more is needed, and find abuse of permits. Names and phone numbers confirm the uniqueness of individuals who are parking a vehicle fleet on the street. Open processing of data serves municipalities because they don't have the money to do all the analysis that kids working on college projects do. Open data is dragging government out of the stone age if you let it.
Except it is not what the Census Bureau does
First, they will not give out data to anyone where an individual or household could be personally identified, regardless of how the actual identity is concealed, so finding out how many parking permits each household has (regardless of the information below) would not be something the Census Bureau could legally divulge.
Second, they only survey beyond the 10 decennial questions, so everything is an estimate based on a 97% confidence level with a margin of error. Extrapolating would be difficult.
Second, they don't collect data on where an automobile is stored, so on street and off street would be the same.
You will be giddy to know that an estimated 75% of Somerville households have vehicles, but that wont held Wallack much.
I found your article shallow
I found your article shallow and your supposed abuses of the system underwhelming. You couldn't even catch your one egregious case using more than one of 11 permits at once.
The point of the parking program is to prevent non-residents from taking up spaces. You didn't really test whether it's actually effective at doing so, and a list of permit holders is completely unnecessary to make this assessment. The proper methodology is to take a census of cars that are actually parked in resident spaces, and determine what fraction are actually eligible. You could then compare your census results to neighborhoods without permits or cities with different parking policies to determine whether Boston's policy achieves that goal better or more cheaply than the alternatives. Grandstanding about how some resident owns a Porche *and* a Ferrari is just clickbait.
You're a lousy journalist and a worse scientist. Frankly, you don't seem possessed of sufficient competence to be entrusted with the personal information of your research subjects.
I don't claim to be a
I don't claim to be a scientist!
One of my findings was the city doesn't know how many residential parking spots there are, making it difficult to figure out the ratio of permits to spots. The city has pledged to conduct an inventory of spots to help make better policies in the future. So there should be better data coming to a city near you soon.
This.
The city doesn't know how many residential parking spots there are
That's insane!! It's just one demonstration of how broken our approach to parking is, and I really don't understand the hostility some people seem to have to this type of reporting.
By handing out resident permits for free/cheap, cities forgo untold millions in annual revenue by giving away valuable urban real estate, and it makes bad traffic even worse by encouraging residents to own (multiple) cars. Putting some numbers around the problem is a valuable public service!
I think some of it will be
I think some of it will be the nature of the process. I would hope they could tell me how many permits are issued, but would probably have a problem telling me how many are currently valid and in use (meaning the person is still living in Somerville and the car is still registered there).
There's no incentive to drivers moving elsewhere to notify Somerville they are no longer using their permits. Beyond a certain category of drivers who might be able to park without a permit in another nearby city and wants to drive to the T or actually works in Somerville, is there much reason to garage a car elsewhere and keep the car registered in Somerville (meaning the current residents have to be willing to give you the mail related to the car)?
Why should the city know how
Why should the city know how many spaces there are? It's a permit, not a title. It gives the bearer permission to park without being ticketed and towed, not a guaranteed spot. There's no need to know how many spaces exist for that purpose. There's no reason for the number of permits to correspond to the number of spaces. You could have at least attempted to research the topic before writing a newspaper article. Instead you just took some cheap shots at some people who live in the city and own more than one car, because you're a lazy hack.
Also, congratulations, you got the city to tell you they'd look into it. You really brought about some important changes! You and your truck-stalking flunky are a real Woodward and Bernstein. I'll alert the Pulitzer committee right now.
Seriously, do you even have an editor? Some experienced news writer who will push back against your weak arguments and lame story ideas and keep you from doing such shoddy work?
Obvious reasons
Cities are expected to PLAN. Plans require DATA. CHANGE happens and cities need to be able to respond to that change in an intelligent manner.
With the GLX coming in, there are going to be shifts in habits and parking that require some policy changes. That will be very difficult without at least some idea of 1) what parking exists; 2)where that parking is; and 3) how many permits are out there and where they are listed.
Seriously, you could at least have researched basic urban planning 101 before posting such a verbose, yet naive comment, but you couldn't be bothered because you're such a lazy anon.
The green line extension is
The green line extension is going to change parking in Boston how?
Also, the Parking Clerk is responsible for urban planning?
Take your ignorance and snark to a bike thread swirls.
The Green Line Extention will
The Green Line Extention will change parkign in Somerville.
I don't claim to be a
Thats a bait and switch. Quit claiming you're doing a disinterested study of the effectiveness of permit programs and go write your diatribes against capitalist running dog lackeys in Pravda.
I don't live in Somerville,
I don't live in Somerville, but I would object to having my phone # and email address handed over and linked to my address. They're unlisted for a reason, and it sounds like residents don't have a way to opt out of having this provided to other people.
Screw you
Regardless of the legality, the fact that you and your paper are spending time and money trying to get my personal information, while sitting on your hands when it comes to FOIA-ing *ANYTHING AT ALL* about Boston2024, is out of bounds.
Yeah, for those of you ready to jump just know I do realize that the Globe can do two things at once, and yes this information might very well be legally required for disclosure.
But screw you for putting the time, effort, and money into this but doing pretty much nothing but copy-editing of Boston2024's press releases for publication and letting Shirley Leung give them tongue-baths without even understanding the basic premises of the bid and its impacts. You realize that your paper hasn't actually broken a single story about what may be the biggest transfer of wealth and real estate in Boston in a generation?
Try doing afflicting the comfortable rather than trying to get my date of birth and email address for your marketing purposes, er, I mean "article".
I've never before been more happy and proud to not give you a goddam dime of my money (thank you, private browsing!).
Kind of sucks because I would
Kind of sucks because I would be upset if my that much of my personal information was available attached to something as simple as my parking permit. But it does limit someone like you trying to investigate because if you simply get addresses it does not account for 4 people with cars that may live in 1 address and (in some cases) justify the need for 4 permits in 1 household.
The city really should crack down on permits per individual, that woman in the north end deserves to have all her cars towed daily.
Which hoods in the city require motorcycles to have parking permits?
YMMV, but it's not as easy in Somerville
I would be surprised if there was as much parking fraud in Somerville as there is in Boston, simply because they make it a giant pain in the ass to get the permits. When I initially moved to S'ville, there was a big to-do while getting my permit because the 2nd floor owners had moved to the 1st floor, and the 3rd floor renter had moved to the 2nd, and I had moved into the 3rd. Nobody had changed their information with the city, so they allowed me to register the 1st floor permit/2 guest permits for the year, with the permits flagged to change over for the renewal. But that demonstrates how specific the information in their systems is. There are also strict limitations on the radius and duration of the guest permits, and they DEFINITELY enforce them. They also enforce the 48-hour rule, albeit sporadically. Long story short, I'm not seeing how the potential fraud exposure overrides the rights of residents to not have all of their information released to a reporter.
Think Somerville uses the same rules for everyone?
No special favors for political friends of the mayor? Could that be what privacy is sought?
Somerville is wrong
Either for withholding the information or asking for so much "personal" info and retaining it in the first place!
By having the information (like BC having interviews of ex-IRA members talking about their crimes), it is subject to release someday, or perhaps being hacked and stolen!
The Boston Globe and other media have been on the state for being one of the worst in the country for hiding information from the public. They fight the public in court and make outrageous claims of costs for lawyers to go through records to make sure any disclosures are safe for release. This ruling for the Globe is a positive step for open government.
I've asked for JUST email lists of Arlington's town notification lists that residents signed up for that even had a disclaimer that their email addresses were not guaranteed to be kept private. This, WITHOUT names or any other associated information and got rejected, then rejected on appeal to the state supervisor of records. This, while other states grant such requests and email addresses are not guaranteed to have no identifying information. The town Democratic machine just wanted to keep opponents from having an email list as long as theirs.
Somerville seems to have cited Arlington's refusal of my request of email addresses to justify their refusal! The Supervisor of Records made an arbitrary and wrong decision in denying my appeal and didn't mention its reversal on behalf of the Globe! It may not have been completely arbitrary as Arlington's town counsel at the time probably made a phone call to pull some strings and now happens to work in the State Secretary's office.
If a property owner wants privacy, they put the home in a trust and use a lawyer for the contact. For a car, register under a corporation, rent a parking spot. If you didn't do that, then you didn't want so much privacy.
Corporations and trusts
Corporations and trusts require lots of paperwork be filed lots if fees and probably an attorney or two. Why should people who dont have the dough not have the same right to privacy?
You are paying anyway
You have to pay to buy a house, register a deed, buy a car, register it, title it. Buy a domain name and pay extra to have the contact info kept hidden. Then again, you don't have to buy any of those things and have your privacy.
A luxury
Privacy is now a luxury for the rich now apparently...
You just keep me hangin' on
???
Stupid reporters who can't write ...
A sorry lot, all of them!
Ahem, I started to write one thing in that paragraph, switched to something else, then obviously forgot to take out that extraneous clause. Gone now.
Extraneous Claus is Santa's
Extraneous Claus is Santa's long forgotten (and much maligned) brother who puts up Xmas decorations in October.
God Bless Somerville! It is
God Bless Somerville! It is protecting it's citizens from not only harassment from the Globe but also from other marketers. Lists like this have great value. The Globe would eventually get around to selling it. The do not call list does not work as well as it use to work. Either it is being ignored or the calls are originating from outside the United States. In JP I am still getting one or two a day.
Why would you say such a thing?
That is totally wrong. The Globe has better things to do than make a big public stink about getting a list and then turning around and selling that info. They would get their asses sued into the next decade. Like them or loath them, saying they would sell that list is just insane.
Whereas I normally support
Whereas I normally support right-to-know-requests, personal information in the hands of the government should be exempt. In New Hampshire, we have one of the stronger right-to-know laws in the nation (RSA 91-A) and there are explicit exemptions for things like like DMV data, firearms licenses, welfare rolls, and so on. If MA doesn't protect personal data of a similar nature, they should.
Citations in Determination letter.
The citations in the Determination letter should include the relevant weblinks so the citation can easily be checked. Supervisor of Public Records failed to provide good references for the citations.
Um, no
What Adam posted for you is basically a back and forth between two adversaries in a legal battle. I believe what the City would say is "look it up your damned self. We gave you the citation." Besides, the court decisions are probably firewalled.
Sorry, Don, but they don't have to, and in any event this was not destined for the public. Perhaps you can look them up for us and post the links here.
The citations are in proper legal format
and it's a scanned letter for Pete's sake
Is someone making a fuss?
Maybe someone is using the fight over sensitive Somerville residents' information to put on a show about public records. Wasn't openness just in the news quite recently?
DPPA does not apply to
DPPA does not apply to Somerville's data. People throw around "DPPA" like it applies to everything, but it narrowly applies to data that comes out of the RMV. Since parking stickers come from forms submitted by drivers to the city, DPPA isn't relevant at all. It's absurd the city is making that sort of claim. They may as well cite the Patriot Act.
Besides, if Somerville just wanted to protect privacy, all they had to do was hash the name of the permit holder and leave out the email address. That would have given the Globe all the information they need.
Corruption and Hypocrisy the likely answers
to why Somerville and Cambridge refuse to supply parking permit data!
I would be surprised if Somerville DIDN'T do special favors for Curtatone's and other friends on parking permits!
Cambridge and now Somerville have public anti-car policies. Yet, I wonder how many permits for smog machines some of the car-hate demagogues possess!
Even anonymized data might show the politically incorrect thing year over year - car use is growing!
Why does anyone care?
If you need more than one car, move out of Somerville. There's plenty of public transportation, and if you consider public transit beneath you, move to Newton.
Y do u need ppls email &
Y do u need ppls email & phone #'s?
Administrative Law & Practice v38-40 of Massachusetts Practice
Robert Fitzpatrick, Gerald McDonough, Alexander Cella
Administrative Law and Practice (Volumes. 38, 39, 40, Massachusetts Practice Series)
http://www.worldcat.org/title/administrative-law-and-practice/oclc/13338395
http://legalsolutions.thomsonreuters.com/law-products/Treatises/Administ...
. Part IV. Popular Constraints Upon the Exercise of Power by Administrative Agencies, Public Officials, and Public Employees
16. Public Records and Freedom of Information
1. Public Records in Massachusetts
2. Statutory Exemptions from Public Disclosure of Records
3. Access to Public Records Under Freedom of Information Act
4. The Relationship of the Freedom of Information Act to Other Statutes
5. Judicial Proceedings to Compel Compliance With Freedom of Information Act
6. Records Conservation
7. The Supervisor of Public Records—Freedom of Information Regulations
8. The Freedom of Information Regulations of the Commissioner of Administration and Finance
17. Informational Privacy and Confidentiality
1. Privacy and Informational Privacy
2. The Fair Information Practices Act
3. The Criminal Offender Record Information and Data System
4. The Model Privacy and Confidentiality Matters
5. Miscellaneous Privacy and Confidentiality Matters
18. The Open Meeting Law--Government in the Sunshine
1. Openness in Government
2. The Nature and Scope of the Open Meeting Law
3. The Opening Meeting Law—Procedures
4. Statutory Purposes for Lawful Executive or Closed Sessions
5. Judicial Enforcement
http://legalsolutions.thomsonreuters.com/law-products/Treatises/Administ...
http://www.worldcat.org/title/administrative-law-and-practice/oclc/13338395
resident parking and equal protection under the law
"the city argues releasing the data would violate the equal-protection clause of the US constitution - and its state equivalent, 'by creating an unlawful classification between drivers based upon whether they afford themselves of the privilege of obtaining a resident parking permit.' "
Somerville had better be careful with that argument if they want to continue to have resident-only parking. The whole *point* of the scheme is to provide UNequal protection. They make it illegal for some people to use a public street, in order to make it easier for certain other people.