Just because the records created on behalf of the government are held by a private enterprise doesn't mean they aren't government records.

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tptacek 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Right, I agree. My point is that the FOIA laws of many states forbid disclosing the data this web page purports to surface.

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specialist 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes but: Privatization is an effective way to negate the public's right know.

eg Some companies have claimed trade secret protections to prevent public access. Infamously, election administration vendors like Diebold.

I imagine anyone trying to investigate govt activities conducted by Palantir (for example) will run into similar stonewalling. Even getting the fulltext of contracts can be challenging.

	▲	diydsp 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Not automatically. There's aleeady case law(0x1) that ruled that images captured by Flock ALPR cameras are public records, even though the data are stored by Flock (a private vendor), not directly by the city. The court rejected the notion that “because the data sits on a private server, it’s not a public record.” Instead, it said that since the surveillance is paid for by the public (taxpayers) and used by a public agency, the data must comply with the state’s public-records law. This shows that — in at least one jurisdiction — using a private company to run ALPRs doesn’t shield the data from public-records requests. (0x1) https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/washington-court-rules...