Home » Posts tagged 'FOIA' (Page 18)
Tag Archives: FOIA
Leaked EPA document shows it knowingly approved pesticide toxic to honeybees
I'm quite partial to honeybees since I was a hobbyist beekeeper (got my first bees from the inimitable Richard Taylor on whom David Foster Wallace wrote his undergraduate honors thesis). And so I was particularly bummed about the news of a leaked EPA document (PDF) in which, despite warnings by EPA Scientists about the pesticide clothianidin being toxic to honeybees, EPA approved its use anyway. "Clothianidin has already been banned by Germany, France, Italy, and Slovenia for its toxic effects. So why won't the EPA follow? The answer probably has something to do with the American affinity for corn products. But without honey bees, our entire food supply is in trouble." For more on honeybee colony collapse disorder, I'd highly recommend seeing the documentary Queen of the Sun HOUSE HEARING, 110TH CONGRESS - HEARING TO REVIEW THE STATUS OF POLLINATOR HEALTH INCLUDING COLONY COLLAPSE DISORDER
Congressman Issa proposes collecting names of FOIA requesters over the last 4 years
[Update 1: some agencies, like the Department of Defense and State Department, already make their FOIA logs available. The Government Attic has a good list of agencies with logs as well. See this list of agency FOIA reading rooms and Stanford Library's FOIA collection. JRJ] I missed this when it was first published on Saturday (slow news day right?!). Last week Congressman Darrell Issa, the new chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent a letter to 180 federal agencies, from the Department of Defense to the Social Security Administration, asking for electronic files containing the names of people who requested the documents, the date of their requests and a description of information they sought. For those still pending after more than 45 days, he also asked for any communication between the requestor and the federal agency. Mr. Issa says he wants to make sure agencies respond in a timely fashion to Freedom of Information Act requests and do not delay them out of political considerations. But, as the NYT notes, the "federal government receives about 600,000 FOIA requests ... a vast majority from corporate executives seeking information on competitors that might do business with the government." Republican Congressman Proposes Tracking Freedom of Information Act Requests. Eric Liption. NY Times.
Representative Darrell Issa calls it a way to promote transparency: a request for the names of hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens, business executives, journalists and others who have requested copies of federal government documents in recent years. Mr. Issa, a California Republican and the new chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, says he wants to make sure agencies respond in a timely fashion to Freedom of Information Act requests and do not delay them out of political considerations. But his extraordinary request worries some civil libertarians. It “just seems sort of creepy that one person in the government could track who is looking into what and what kinds of questions they are asking,” said David Cuillier, a University of Arizona journalism professor and chairman of the Freedom of Information Committee at the Society of Professional Journalists. “It is an easy way to target people who he might think are up to no good.” Mr. Issa sent a letter on Tuesday asking 180 federal agencies, from the Department of Defense to the Social Security Administration, for electronic files containing the names of people who requested the documents, the date of their requests and a description of information they sought. For those still pending after more than 45 days, he also asked for any communication between the requestor and the federal agency. The request covers the final three years of Bush administration and the first two years of President Obama’s. “Our interest is not in the private citizens who make the requests,” said Kurt Bardella, a spokesman for Mr. Issa. “We are looking at government responses to these Freedom of Information requests and the only way to measure that is to tally all that information.”[Thanks for the tip Crooks and Liars!] Continue reading
Justice Department Censors Nazi-Hunting History
Justice Department Censors Nazi-Hunting History, ("National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 331"), National Security Archive, George Washington University, November 13, 2010.
The Department of Justice censored dozens of pages of a candid history of Nazi-hunting (and Nazi-protecting) by the U.S. government to such a self-defeating extent that former officials leaked the entire document to the New York Times this week, instead of fulfilling the Freedom of Information request and lawsuit filed by the National Security Archive and its counsel David Sobel. "Now that we can compare the redacted document with the complete text of the original report, it is clear that the Justice Department is withholding information without legal justification," said David Sobel. ...The Archive posted today its original FOIA request, the government's response, our appeal by counsel David Sobel, the legal complaint in the case National Security Archive v. Department of Justice, the interim response from DoJ, the "Vaughn index" of withheld pages and alleged justifications for the withholding, and the 45 pages of partial and highly-redacted response.Continue reading
BREAKING: 46,000+ pages of SCOTUS nominee Kagan Docs Now Online
In an article entitled "In Supreme Court Work, Early Views of Kagan" Charlie Savage at the NY Times has just released a ton(!) of memos written by SCOTUS nominee Elena Kagan during her time as a young law clerk working for Justice Thurgood Marshall at the Supreme Court.
The latest release with more than 46,500 pages re: SCOTUS Nominee, Elena Kagan, are now available on The Clinton Library Web Site.
You Can Access the Individual Files Here (Found in 74 Boxes)
or Download Seven Large PDF Files (about 205 Megs each) and Access All Pages in All Files
See Also: Previously Released Documents re: Elena Kagan
[Thanks for the heads-up Gary Price at ResourceShelf!] Continue readingSunshine Week 2010 shines light on government transparency
[UPDATE: Scroll down for list of library happenings for Sunshine Week]
Spring has sprung with a vengeance here in SF. And that could only mean one thing: Sunshine Week!! Yes it's time once again to feel the warm FOIA on your cheek, to discuss and raise awareness of the importance of free and open government information, transparency and the [w:Freedom of Information Act]. Be on the lookout for editorials in your local newspaper (like this one in the Cleveland Plain Dealer), discuss FOIA with your friends and family (you'll be glad you did :-)) and highlight it in your libraries -- perhaps by having a public showing of the OpenTheGovernment Webcast!
OpenTheGovernment.org is having a Sunshine Week Webcast 12-2PM EST on Friday March 19 entitled "Building Transparency." The Webcast will include a host of great speakers including Norm Eisen, Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform, Jim Harper, Director of Information Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, John Wonderlich, Policy Director at the Sunlight Foundation, Kevin Goldberg, American Society of News Editors (ASNE) counsel, Miriam Nisbet, Director of the new Office of Government Information Services (OGIS), Melanie Sloan, Executive Director, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Melanie Pustay, Director of the Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Information Policy (OIP), Eric Gundersen, President and co-founder of Development Seed and Sean Moulton, Director of Federal Information Policy at OMB Watch. It should be a great discussion so hope you can tune in.
What libraries and others are doing for Sunshine Week:
- Northern CA Association of Law Libraries (NOCALL), in association with the Special Library Association Sierra Nevada Chapter, is sponsoring 2 Sunshine Week events; one in Sacramento and one in San Francisco. Both have interesting lists of speakers and require registration for a small fee ($20 for Sacramento event and $15 for SF event). In addition, the SF event immediately precedes the NOCALL Spring Institute on information piracy, "Piracy on the Barbary Coast" which NOCALL and SLA members can attend at the NOCALL member rate, and later in the evening, a celebration of NOCALL's 30th anniversary.
- Freedom of Information Day at the New York Public Library. Tuesday, March 16, 2010, 10:30 - noon. Conference Room 18 on the lower level of New York Public Library (188 Madison Ave. @ 34th St.). This year's guest speaker is Heather Joseph, Executive Director, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, (SPARC), an international alliance of academic and research libraries working to create a more open system of scholarly communications. FOIA day has been held at NYPL annually since 1993.
- California State University San Bernardino Pfau Library has partnered with the San Bernardino League of Women Voters to be a site for the OpenTheGovernment.org webinar on government transparency. This is the second year that Pfau Library has participated. You can see video of last year.
- The web site www.TalkStandards.com will focus on open government during its monthly online forum. The forum will take place on Thursday March 18th from 8-12 Pacific / 11-3 EST / 4-8pm GMT. TalkStandards is an active online community where ICT developers, researchers, policymakers and other interested parties can share ideas and collaborate on the global standards system. Each month, a timely topic is chosen (last month, it was eHealth, for example).
Latest Comments