As reported by Randall Chase with the Associated Press yesterday, Delaware’s Cyber Security Advisory Council kicked off their first meeting with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) violation. But what the article didn’t cover was how the state tried to cover its tracks after the meeting.
James Collins, the state’s chief information officer and head of the council, then said the panel would meet in executive session, even though Delaware’s Freedom of Information Act requires that such closed-door meetings be noticed ahead of time.
But do they have the ability to time travel into the future to give that notice? Apparently, they do!
This is the agenda for the first meeting as shown on Delaware’s Public Meeting Calendar website.
It looks like they have everything covered, right? Including a FOIA Exemption Proposal because they know they are violating FOIA. Here is the page from the Public Meeting Calendar website:
Looks okay to me, right?
In the above picture, taken from the bottom left-hand corner of the Public Meeting Calendar notice, it shows three change dates. 3/3/2016 was the original posting of the meeting, 3/22/2016 I would assume had the addition of the FBI Agent giving the briefing on the unclassified threat, and the 3/23/2016 change was to give notice about the group going into executive session to discuss the unclassified threat. So maybe Randall Chase got it all wrong, right?
Nope. This picture is the properties of the PDF. If you right-click with your mouse on a PDF, it tells you when a PDF was created and modified. This PDF was actually created yesterday, 3/23/2016 at 3:17:16pm. It was a brand new agenda. The part blacked out is my own personal location for my computer which I didn’t think was necessary to throw out there so I will fully admit I blacked it out in the picture.
Someone should really file a FOIA complaint on this one to the Delaware Department of Justice! Oh wait, I already did…
The Season Of Myths 