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FOIA
Gabriela Schneider, the Communications Director of the Sunlight Foundation, writes:
David Brisson marked the completion of his fall internship at Sunlight today by posting a recap of his independent research project. Since it digs into FOIA, I thought you all would appreciate it: http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/2009/12/18/can-the-internet-save-foia/Continue reading
The Document Cloud
DocumentCloud is a new service being developed with startup funding from the James L. Knight Foundation. It sounds like an excellent service. It will be software, a Web site, and a set of open standards that will make original source documents easy to find, share, read and collaborate on, anywhere on the Web." I cannot help but wonder why libraries are not at the forefront of projects like this. Started by reporters at the New York Times and ProPublica, this service will give individuals and organizations involved in original reporting mechanisms for sharing the documents they obtain and discover and making those documents available to other for new reporting and new uses. Over two dozen organizations are working on the development of DocumentCloud, including traditional publications and news organizations such as The Atlantic, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Seattle Times, Thomson Reuters, Washington Post, and WNYC Radio, as well as organizations that collect and publish documents, such as The National Security Archive, ACLU National Security Project, OpenCRS, and the Sunlight Foundation,
Users will be able to search for documents by date, topic, person, location, etc. and will be able to do "document dives," collaboratively examining large sets of documents. Think of it as a card catalog for primary source documents. DocumentCloud is not meant to be a general document hosting service, like Scribd, Docstoc or Google Docs. Our goal is to build a service that makes source documents easier to find and share regardless of where they are hosted. It is a complement to these services, and not a competitor. the goal is to make documents even easier to find on search engines. DocumentCloud will have information about documents and relations between them, for example what locations, people, or organizations a group of documents have in common. Conceived of by journalists working at ProPublica and The New York Times, DocumentCloud will be managed as an independent nonprofit.Their FAQ notes: "Will there be an API? Hell yes." See also: Coming soon: Data mining made easier, By Alex Byers, Nieman Watchdog (July 11, 2009). Continue reading
Updated Guides to Government Info Access Laws
Catching up with some updates released in August: CRS has updated its Access to Government Information in the United States report. The latest edition is dated August 31, 2009 (via OpenCRS.com). The Justice Department released its 2009 edition of Department of Justice Guide to the Freedom of Information Act on August 10. The announcement says the "2009 edition contains a newly updated and revised discussion of all aspects of the Freedom of Information Act, as amended by the OPEN Government Act, including the Act's procedural requirements, its exemptions and exclusions, as well as considerations applicable to FOIA litigation." Continue reading
CIA Records Search Tool (CREST)
Steven Aftergood reports (CIA Updates Digital Archive, Restricts Access, Secrecy News, March 26, 2009) on the release by the Central Intelligence Agency of a new tool that allows users to search on-line to discover the availability of declassified CIA documents. The tool is the CIA FOIA - 25-Year Program Archive Search. But you cannot download the documents you discover. Steven notes that the CIA will not "put the entire CREST database online so that anyone, anywhere could download these declassified, often heavily censored records. Nor will CIA release an electronic copy of the CREST database so that others may post it." The CIA justifies withholding the complete text because, "The Agency evidently believes that there are latent secrets concealed in the declassified record that could somehow be extracted by a clever analyst who reviewed them in electronic form." See also: Pozen, David. The Mosaic Theory, National Security, and the Freedom of Information Act. SSRN eLibrary. 26 Mar 2009. Steven also says:
In 1995, President Clinton ordered agencies that classify information to “establish a Governmentwide database of information that has been declassified” (Executive Order 12958, section 3.8). That never happened, and in 2003 President Bush deleted the requirement (Executive Order 13292, section 3.7). Restoring such a requirement, and fulfilling it, would be an appealing feature of a new executive order on classification.Continue reading
Breaking: new FOIA guidelines released
This is great news, especially given it's coming during Sunshine Week! This looks like a repudiation of the Ashcroft memo which had reversed FOIA regulations that had been based on guidelines which had established a “presumption” in favor disclosure. The Ashcroft memo reversed those regulations and told agencies to "carefully consider the fundamental values behind the exemptions – national security, privacy, government’s interests, etc – and to lean in their favor whenever possible." (quoted from Coalition of Journalists for Open Government). Official: US to Release Data Unless Harm Foreseen. NY Times, March 19, 2009
The guidelines were expected to be released later Thursday, amid Sunshine Week, an annual national observation by journalism groups and other organizations to promote open government and freedom of information. The new standard essentially returns to one issued by Attorney General Janet Reno during the Clinton administration. It would replace a more restrictive policy imposed by the Bush administration under which the Justice Department would defend any sound legal argument for withholding records. Justice is responsible for government-wide guidance on how to implement the records law because it defends agencies in court if they are sued by people who disagree with a decision to withhold records. Under the Holder standard, Justice lawyers would not defend a decision to withhold records unless their release could be shown to produce foreseeable harm. The new standards were also expected to encourage agencies to release more documents where the law leaves the decision to their discretion -- an amplification of Obama's order that they adopt a ''presumption for disclosure.'' The standards could also affect the outcome of a dozen or more pending lawsuits, including ones to obtain the legal rationales behind Bush administration anti-terrorism tactics like wiretapping Americans without a warrant and harsh interrogation of terrorism detainees.Continue reading
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