Kind of Awkward: California City Sues Bloggers And Then Takes it Back

 

Such a charming city, too bad the City Council doesn't know how to use Dropbox. (Photo: blogspot)

        It all started when the city of Fullerton decided to use Dropbox to store important documents, some of which were meant to be confidential. They hosted the folder at a URL that was accessible to the general public, without a password. They just thought that the name of the folder was really hard, so no one would ever find it. 

        Yup. Your read that right. This might sound like an episode right out of Parks and Recreation, but it's true.

        Then, a watchdog group called FFFF (Friends For Fullerton's Future) came across these files. Some of them were lit! There were records suggesting that the city considered making a police officer resign rather than face official discipline. All to avoid generating a paper trail, which would look bad. FFFF started publishing these records on their blog so the public would have access to them. But how did they find out about them, you may ask?

        According to the FFFF's website, they had been exchanging emails with the City Hall. You know, asking questions, doing their job as concerned citizens. And they got dozens of city emails containing the link to the folder.

        As you can imagine, Fullerton wasn't happy about being exposed. So, they filed a lawsuit against the group and accused the bloggers of hacking their system.

        Of course, they were wrong and incompetent from the beginning and it wasn't hard to prove that. As things got worse and worse for Fullerton, they decided to settle the lawsuit. The city agreed to pay $230,000 in legal fees plus $60,000 to Ferguson and Curlee (the guys behind FFFF).

        "The city shouldn't have tried to blame their mistakes on journalists trying to cover the city. It was unbelievably wrong," said the group's attorney, Kelly Aviles.

        "(It) represents a victory not only for the writers, but for the First Amendment," wrote the Editorial Board at The Orange County Register.

        Not every battle to defend journalists' rights to publish their stories will be as easy as in Fullerton. In spite of that, fighting for it is a vital part of living in a democracy. Th Freedom of the Press is not a special privilege for the media. It is a recognition that the media has a role to perform in making sure that debate is informed.