Law360: LabMD Rips 11th Circ. For Refusing FTC Data Security Suit

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The Eleventh Circuit’s refusal to weigh in on a complaint from the Federal Trade Commission accusing LabMD Inc. of failing to safeguard patient information unlawfully shifts the balance of power between agencies and courts, the company recently said in a request for an en banc rehearing…

 

Reed Rubinstein, an attorney for LabMD and senior vice president of litigation at nonprofit Cause of Action, told Law360 on Wednesday that his client shouldn’t have to wait for the FTC proceeding to play out when there’s no doubt about its outcome.

 

“If the process is going to result in an outcome that is, for all intents and purposes, predetermined, what is the justification for requiring a person or a company to have to go through that process in order to obtain judicial review?” Rubinstein asked.

Politico: EMAIL SAGA CONTINUES

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Cause of Action, the right-leaning government watchdog group, has filed three new FOIA requests with the State Department to recover some of Hillary Clinton’s State Department emails. The first, delivered to the department’s IG, seeks “documents relating to any review, audit or investigation, whether merely considered, ongoing or completed, concerning Secretary’s Clinton’s compliance with electronic recordkeeping requirements and use of personal devices for agency business,” as well as any emails she might have sent to the White House — correspondence the group contends would prove high-level officials knew Clinton was using a personal email account. The other FOIAs take aim at whether Clinton received any records management training or waivers from federal rules. The FOIAs: http://bit.ly/1EObZ8y

Headlines & Global News: Clinton Maintains Innocence In Email Scandal While Others Question If She Could Be Prosecuted

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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday defended her use of a private email address during her tenure as the U.S.’s top diplomat, saying that it was more convenient to use one device for both her government work and personal life, though she admitted she would have done things different in retrospect.

 

“Looking back it would have been better to use separate phones and two separate e-mail accounts,” Clinton said following a keynote address at a Women’s Empowerment Principles event at the United Nations in New York. “I thought using one device would be simpler; obviously, it hasn’t worked out that way.”…

 

“The only reason to use a private email system for official government communication is to keep information from becoming public and covering your tracks,” Cause of Action Executive Director Dan Epstein said in an email to reporters, according to The Daily Caller. “Sec. Clinton should have known that what she was doing violated the letter and spirit of the law. This isn’t a matter of poor judgment; this is a deliberate and orchestrated violation of the public trust that raises serious legal and ethical concerns.”

National Review: Hillary’s System Probably Let Obama’s E-Mails Get Hacked. Probably.

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Meanwhile, the government accountability group Cause of Action made three new FOIA requests regarding HRC’s email use. One is being sent to the State Department’s Inspector General, asking for all documents relating to any review, audit or investigation, whether merely considered, ongoing or completed, concerning Secretary’s Clinton’s compliance with electronic recordkeeping requirements and use of personal devices for agency business. The group is also asking for “All documents, including but not limited to electronic communications, including any person at the White House, the U.S. Department of State, the Clinton Family Foundation, and the Clinton Foundation, referring or relating to any document in the request above.” A spokesman for Cause of Action writes, “It’s clear that the White House, including President Obama, knew Secretary Clinton was using a non-government email address. The key question we’re asking is, did the White House ever do anything about it?”

 

Washington Times: Hillary’s Watergate

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It is hard to imagine the 2016 presidential race without Hillary Clinton.

 

But Mrs. Clinton seems to have missed the most important lesson that everyone else learned from the Watergate scandal: The cover up is worse than the crime.

 

“The Federal Records Act requires that an agency head preserves a record. It also requires that if records were unlawfully removed, defaced or destroyed that the agency head notify the archivist at the National Archives. In this case, Mrs. Clinton should have notified the head archivist that she had in her possession, official agency records,” said Daniel Epstein, executive director of Washington transparency group Cause of Action.

 

Mrs. Clinton may have also been in violation of national security laws if any of her emails contained classified information.

CQ Researcher: Presidential Power

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Dan Epstein, executive director of the civic watchdog group Cause of Action, says Obama has “politicized the bureaucracy” by dictating agency actions. In August 2014, the group sued the Obama administration, alleging that white House attorneys interfere with the release of public documents in violation of the freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The practice is based on an April 15, 2009, white House memo directing general counsels at all executive agencies and departments to consult with white House counsel before complying with FOIA requests.

 

Epstein says the memo “allowed the white House to assert more control over the ways agencies control docu- ments that let the public know what the government is up to. It has chilled democracy, and done so in ways that have gone unchecked by Congress and the courts.” As a result, he says, agencies “are following laws dictated by the president rather than laws dictated by the people.”

Law360: Nonprofit Asks 7th Circ. To Revive FCA Chicago Transit Suit

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A government watchdog asked the Seventh Circuit on Wednesday to revive its False Claims Act suit against the Chicago Transit Authority for overbilling the government up to $55 million for bus usage, saying the nonprofit brought original, nonpublic information in the case.

 

Cause of Action, a Washington-based public interest group, said it was the first to blow the whistle on CTA for its allegedly fraudulent billing of the Federal Transit Administration for miles its buses traveled when they were not in service. U.S. District Judge Robert M. Dow Jr. dismissed the suit in October, saying the group’s accusations were “substantially the same” as some that had been published elsewhere. But Cause of Action said Wednesday its 2012 complaint went further than the two earlier allegations, neither of which was made public.