The OPRAmachine site administration will endeavor to remove site content in legitimate instances where private identifying information, such as social security numbers and dates of birth are disclosed by way of the government documents published in the course of the site’s operation. Generally, we will require a showing of material and substantial harm to an individual that would come as a result of the continued publication of information on OPRAmachine.
Content removal requests will only be honored when submitted by a custodian of records for the government agency that provided the documents on the request page. The government agency should The government agency must contact the OPRAmachine site administration via email, online contact form or other means and identify with specificity the request that they are seeking removal of documents from.
Removal of content from the publicly visible website and database of requests is an extraordinary remedy that will only be deployed on a case by case basis based upon the totality of the circumstances and any mitigating factors - not solely along bright line criteria. Failure to redact an item when the OPRA law would have allowed redaction is not reason enough for the removal of content.
We will therefore only remove content (either that which was generated by users or provided by public bodies in response to a request when exceedingly persuasive justification is shown that the content’s publication will directly and substantially injure a private citizen, absent any legitimate journalistic or public interest in the continued publication of the challenged material on OPRAmachine.com.
Site administration intends for OPRAmachine to further governmental transparency and openness. We believe that the transparency provided by the site, including the publication of request and responses provides a public service and is essential to gaining a candid insight into the OPRA process.
Before removing content, the OPRAmachine site administration will conduct a public interest balancing test. We will balance the privacy interest expressed by the party requesting removal of the material with our journalistic interest in publishing the documents. If we conclude that additional redactions or removal of the documents is necessary, we will attempt to work with the public body’s records custodian to provide a properly redacted version of the files.