New England First Amendment Coalition

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August 2025

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Boston Police Radio Transmissions Will Convert to ‘Encrypted Digital’ System, Officials Say

Justin Silverman, executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition, said he is concerned the change will limit access for journalists and the rest of the public to live information about incidents as they develop in real time.

“Having a policy that doesn’t allow for most of that communication to be publicly accessible is ultimately going to cause more harm than good,” Silverman said.

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Police Body Cameras are Supposed to Shed Light. R.I. Rules Let Officers Keep Footage in the Dark

NEFAC Executive Director Justin Silverman said Rhode Island's body-worn camera regulations leave room for misinterpretation and should be revised in the interest of public transparency.

“Our recommendations are really focused on narrowing the language of the policy and getting very specific about the circumstances that would need to present to withhold footage,” Silverman said.

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Penobscot County's Opioid Settlement Committee is Meeting in Secret

While advisory bodies in Maine are exempt from open meeting laws, NEFAC Executive Director Justin Silverman said the lack of transparency around decision-making processes does not serve public interest.

“We shouldn’t ignore the spirit of the open meeting law and the public’s right to know,” Silverman said. “Regardless of whether a particular advisory body falls within an open meeting law, there’s certain principles at play here that should be respected."

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Other Commentary and Coverage

Amazon Could Buy Land in Gorham for $4M. Is That a Good Deal for the Town?

NEFAC Executive Director Justin Silverman said that while the town may have fulfilled its legal burden, it may not have provided everything it could have to the public. Though he could not speak to the Gorham case specifically, Silverman said he has seen a “concerning” increase in local governments leaning on executive sessions “more out of convenience than necessity.”

“What that does is it increases the likelihood that the deal being made is not a good one — or isn’t the best one that could have been made,” Silverman said. “By the time the deal is made … it’s often too late to go back to the table and renegotiate.”



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Presque Isle’s New Process for Recommending Airlines is Illegal, Experts Say

“It seems to be forcing individuals to profess an opinion or vote that perhaps they don’t agree with,” NEFAC Executive Director Justin Silverman said. “As a matter of the speech rights of those individuals, the members of this body, I have some concern there.” . . . “As a matter of principle, these are important decisions that are being made and they should be made transparently and they’ve been made transparently in the past."



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Nashua Considers Banning Signs, Flags at Public Meetings

In a letter to the Nashua Board of Aldermen, NEFAC President Gregory V. Sullivan and Executive Director Justin Silverman said the arbitrary criteria for enforcement encourages aldermen to only limit speech when they disagree with the opinions being shared.

“While there may be circumstances that would allow reasonable restrictions on these types of expression, a general prohibition based on a ‘security concern’ without any additional guidance as to what would constitute such a concern is ripe for impermissible viewpoint discrimination,” wrote Sullivan and Silverman in the letter.



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