Home » Posts tagged 'secrecy' (Page 10)
Tag Archives: secrecy
Government Information: The OMB Watch Magic Eight-Ball
Information Magic Eight-Ball, OMB Watch, 12/18/2007. "Over the past year, there has been a great deal of activity on issues related to government transparency and secrecy, but it can remain difficult to figure out exactly what all the discussions, reports and hearings actually mean. To try to get to the bottom of this murky issue, we are breaking out our Magic Eight-Ball of Information Policy to ask a few key questions about the past year — the progress and setbacks, laid out in simple terms. We wish there was a better approach, but unfortunately, 2007 was that kind of year for government transparency, with vague and unclear answers for most questions."
Continue readingFOIA Threat in Farm Bill, Act Now
None of us can keep track of everything by ourselves. It takes a community to maintain vigilence about creeping secrecy. So a HUGE tip of the FGI hat to Ian Campbell of The Gov Doc for bringing this item about an effort to gnaw at the Federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) via the federal farm bill, of all things:
If you toil in the fields of government information, you may be interested to know that an urgent campaign is underway to strike language from the Senate version of the Farm Bill which would create a substantial new FOIA exemption and severely restrict public access to important information about farm animal health under a National Animal Identification System (NAIS).
OpenTheGovernment.org has written a letter to Senators expressing opposition to the non-disclosure language in the Senate version of the bill, and the American Library Association, Special Libraries Association, and American Association of Law Libraries are among the 28 organizations to sign on. Please see the letter at:
http://www.openthegovernment.org/otg/farm_bill_letter.pdf
As the letter states, Section 10305 of the Livestock Title of the Farm Bill approved October 25 by the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee gives the Secretary of Agriculture broad authority to restrict and control disclosure of NAIS information, and imposes "disproportionately harsh penalties for press activities protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution." The letter seeks to strike Section 10305 from the bill.
Thanks for the heads up Ian!
Continue readingControl of Presidential Records in the News
Presidential Records Act Stymied in Senate; ALAWASH Urges Action, Library Journal Academic Newswire, October 2, 2007.
Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) has placed a bill that would rescind provisions of a controversial executive order restricting the release of presidential records on hold without explanation. Bunning said that "the president ought to have the right to withhold any records he chooses." The American Library Association's Washington Office (ALAWASH) noted that "the records of the highest elected public office in the country, the President of the United States, belong to the people and are evidence of government activity."
Federal Judge Invalidates Order Allowing Former Presidents to Withhold Records, National Coalition of History, October 2nd, 2007.
On October 1, a federal district court judge gave historians and researchers a partial, but significant victory in a lawsuit questioning the legality of President George W. Bush’s Executive Order (EO) 13233, which broadened the rights of presidents and former-presidents to withhold federal records from the public. The judge struck down the section of the EO that allows a former president to indefinitely delay the release of records. However, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly did not rule on the constitutionality of the Executive Order itself, narrowly crafting her decision to address only specific provisions in the order.Continue reading
GAO’s conclusions on sectarian violence declared secret by Pentagon
US auditor queries military Iraq casualty figures, Yahoo! News, Sep 7, 2007
Continue readingAn independent US government auditor on Friday cast doubt on US military statistics expected to show a huge dip in sectarian violence in Iraq under the current troop surge strategy.
Comptroller General David Walker said there was a "significant difference" of approach between the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which he heads, and Pentagon evaluations of violence in Iraq...."We could not get comfortable with (the military's) methodology for determining what's sectarian versus nonsectarian violence," Walker told senators....
Walker was unable to go into further details, as the rest of the GAO's conclusions in the report on sectarian violence have been declared secret by the Pentagon, and urged senators to read the classified version of the study.
Hearing On Sensitive But Not Classified Information (1987)
Proving that everything old is new again in terms of information restriction, I came across this title from my federal depository's shelves: Hearing on sensitive but not classified information : Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Thursday, May 28, 1987 by United States. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. I thought this part of the introduction was interesting reading:
The difference of opinion was over the means to protect this information. In general, the library and information science communities felt that sensitive material should be classified in order to relieve these communities of the burden of limiting access to information and determining which information should not be made available to foreign nationals or governments. In general, the government and the defense establishment would prefer that the library and information communities exercise a degree of judgement in releasing sensitive data to foreign nationals in order to slow up the flow of valuable technological and other information to the East Bloc. Classifying much of this information would take time and expense for all concerned, as well as limiting the flow of sensitive information to all Americans.In my view the information flowing to the Eastern Bloc couldn't have been that useful since the Warsaw Pact imploded barely two years after this hearing. In this hearing, Sandra K. Peterson of Yale University represented the ALA Government Documents Roundtable (GODORT). Her testimony begins on page 41 of the hearing proceedings. Time constraints keep me from giving you most of Ms. Peterson's testimony, but a key point was that the government's proposed definition of "Sensitive but unclassified" was so broad that GODORT believed "Much of the information that the federal government collects compiles, produces, publishes and disseminates falls within these definitions." Towards the end of her prepared testimony, Ms. Peterson emphasized GODORT's basic position which I believe they hold today. I know we do at FGI:
In summary, GODORT believes that unclassified government information of all formats should be accessible by the American public.Hear, Hear! Now if we could just make the SBU concept go away. Seems like there is more work to do. Continue reading
Latest Comments