HAPPY SUNSHINE WEEK!

It’s our most basic right, really, to know what the hell the gov­ern­ment is doing with our money. But, in recent years, that right has been under attack, with more and more pub­lic infor­ma­tion being kept away from ordi­nary folks.
That’s why the Associated Press and oth­ers have launched Sunshine Week, a seven-​​day cel­e­bra­tion high­light­ing the dan­gers of too much gov­ern­ment secrecy — and the steps peo­ple can take to get their data back.
People are get­ting increas­ingly active, try­ing to mine the hid­den nuggets that lie inside gov­ern­ment archives with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, a new AP study shows. But fewer and fewer of those requests are hon­ored by Washington.

“The loca­tions of stores and restau­rants that have received recalled meat, the names of detainees held by the U.S. over­seas and details about Vice President Dick Cheney’s 2001 energy pol­icy task force are all among the records that the gov­ern­ment isn’t shar­ing with the pub­lic…
At the CIA, just 12 per­cent of the FOIA requests processed were granted in total in 2004, down from 44 per­cent in 1998. The FBI gave peo­ple ask­ing for records every­thing they asked for just 1 per­cent of the time in 2004, com­pared to 5 per­cent in 1998.

That’s not just incon­ve­nient for reporter types. It costs the coun­try a bun­dle. And it actu­ally harms national secu­rity, Rep. Chris Shays (R-​​CT) argues. Battling com­plex ter­ror­ist net­works requires more shar­ing of infor­ma­tion, not less; just look at how effec­tive data-​​hoarding was at stop­ping the Twin Towers attacks.
“Our secrecy sys­tem is all about pro­tect­ing secrecy offi­cers, and has noth­ing to do with pro­tect­ing secrets. It’s a self-​​licking ice-​​cream cone,” Rich Haver, Donald Rumsfeld’s for­mer spe­cial assis­tant for intel­li­gence, told Defense Tech in 2003. “We’re com­part­men­tal­iz­ing the shit out of things. It’s caus­ing a total melt­down of our intel­li­gence processes.“
In response, a group of bipar­ti­san law­mak­ers has intro­duced a set of bills designed to strengthen and speed up the FOIA process. “The last time Congress approved major reforms to FOIA was nearly a decade ago,” the web­site of Sen. John Cornyn (R-​​TX) notes. It’s time to change the law again.
THERE’S MORE: Here’s a set of links to help you file a FOIA request of your own.

March 14th, 2005 | Cloak and Dagger | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.