Montana AG: Public Records Requests Create "Chilling Effect"
Friday, August 09, 2013, 1:24 pm
In March, Associated Press reporters sent the Montana
Department of Justice a public records request for a copy of the state's
database of concealed firearm permit holders. That's not especially
unusual; the AP has requested such information from the state regularly
over the years. But there was a hitch: In 2013, Montana's legislature
passed a new law officially classifying concealed carry data as
confidential. Tim Fox, the Republican attorney general, rejected the
AP's request in mid-July—and then proceeded to notify every sheriff and
county attorney in the state of what he had done. The AP never wrote
about the rejected request, but the word somehow got out anyway:News of the AP request and Fox’s denial first broke July 24 on the website for Aaron Flint, a conservative Billings commentator and broadcaster with Northern Broadcasting System, who has a daily statewide radio show. Flint said he had received a copy of Fox’s memo from a source outside of the Attorney General's Office and posted it on his website. A day later, Media Trackers, a conservative Montana website that covers Montana politics and the media, picked up the story.The reporters who had requested the data found their personal information (including photos of their homes) posted on the Internet, along with thinly-veiled threats, prompting the wire service to file a complaint with the Helena Police Department. The fact that the AP never has and never planned to indiscriminately publish personal information about concealed carry holders in the first place was lost in the angry backlash.
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