Some six weeks after Utah's State Records Committee asked the Salt Lake County district attorney to investigate whether the statewide school computer network willfully deleted Internet filter logs sought by a free-speech activist, the Utah Education Network has indicated it will soon comply with the spirit of Michael Sims's freedom of information request. Sims filed the FOI request in April and won on appeal June 24.
Cofounder of the Censorware Project watchdog group, Sims wants to analyze a month's worth of Web sites to which SmartFilter blocked access at 40 school districts that connect through UEN's proxy server, the September 16 New York Times reported.
Sims hotlinked his online statement questioning UEN's cooperativeness to a July 27 e-mail from network official George Brown, who explained that no 1997-98 school-year logs exist because UEN routinely "overwrites" 31-day-old caches. Sims said he complained to the records committee after "deafening silence" met his suggestion that the information "might still exist" on backup tapes.
Posted September 28, 1998.