are using existing agreements to “control” access to crime data. This raises concerns over the ability of journalists to transparently receive data from police departments, and the questions of exactly who constitutes “media” in a time of technological change. In 2015, Public Engines was purchased by Motorola Solutions, Motorola later discontinued the CrimeReports.com web site and launched CityProtect.com. Motorola then began to publish an open crime data API to over 400 public crime data sets via Socrata. In 2019 when Socrata was purchased by Tyler Technologies, a Motorola competitor, Motorola turned off the Socrata open API, discontinuing public and open access to over 400 open crime data sets nationwide. Seven years after the lawsuit, Reveal created by The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) published an investigative piece covering how many private contractors were continually attempting to privatize data in the public domain. Reveal cited SpotCrime as an “outspoken advocate for greater state and local transparency” noting that SpotCrime’s advocacy for open crime data was an “imbroglio…tale of technological advances, tight government budgets and growing pressure for transparency.” The article explained how private vendors contracted with local governments for data management and software are essentially given control over government and publicly owned data. This kind of relationship enables the vendor's ability to control the flow of public information and restrict the ability of the public to download and re-share public data. In 2020, The Criminologist, a newsletter published by the American Society of Criminology, published an op-ed authored by SpotCrime “A Call for Researchers to Embrace Robust, Open Crime Data”, where the company asked for researchers to embrace an open data mindset behind data used in policing and to resist vendor control of public data. In 2022, Georgetown University Law Center published a paper that highlighted how when government agencies outsource data management to private software companies, the government agencies allow private entities to limit public and agency access to public information. SpotCrime was cited in the paper as a source for the open crime data landscape nationwide to explain how government vendors are hindering access to public data. FOIA and access to public data SpotCrime periodically utilizes local Freedom of Information Act laws (FOIA) to access public data. In 2020, The University of Florida Brechner Center for Freedom of Information published an op-ed by SpotCrime “Without a trace: How a misfired Florida law makes crimes disappear” covering how Florida’s version