Jim Warren (computer Specialist) - Activism

Activism

Warren founded and chaired the first Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference, held in 1991, which drew more than a hundred articles of press coverage, internationally. The CFP conferences have continued, under other leadership, for more than 15 years, consistently drawing national and international attention and attendance.,,,

In 1993, he assisted Debra Bowen pro-bono, then a freshman member of the California State Assembly, in drafting Assembly Bill 1624 (AB 1624) and organized much of the statewide support that helped it pass four committee votes and three floor votes without a single dissenting vote. When AB 1624 took effect on Jan. 1, 1994, it made California the first state in the nation to open all of its computerized public legislative records, statutes, constitution and regulations, to fee-free access via the Internet.

Thereafter, numerous other states modeled their own legislation after AB1624, as evidenced by their use of the same eccentric phrasing that Warren drafted in AB 1624 to describe the Internet, which was relatively unknown at the time: "the largest nonproprietary, nonprofit cooperative public computer network". This was necessary to silence naive politicians objecting that it would be "giving away" public records to the Internet "company".

In 1995–1996, Warren served on the Advisory Panel on Electronic Filings of the California Secretary of State. This Panel advised the Secretary on how-best to implement new mandates for computerizing political-campaign financial statements, and making them timely-available to the public in electronic form without excessive fees.

In 1996–1997, he served on the California Senate's Task Force on Electronic Access to Public Records, that produced recommendations regarding how to make computerized state and local public government records available to the public in electronic form. Warren was one of the minority who advocated online access without agency fees, and charging no more than the direct incremental cost of copying, when copies were requested in physical form. The majority of Task Force members were from city and county agencies, almost entirely advocating making the records available in electronic form, but only for fees far in excess of direct copying costs.