Tag Archives: Freedom of Information Act

Ethan A. Huff ~ Secret Government Documents Reveal Vaccines To Be A Total Hoax

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NaturalNews | January 8 2013

If you have children, you are more than likely already aware of the official U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “Immunization Schedules,” which today recommend an astounding 29 vaccines be given between birth and six years of age, including yearly flu shots, as well as another five to 16 vaccines between ages seven and 18 (http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/). But a recent investigative report compiled by Dr. Lucija Tomljenovic, Ph.D., uncovers more than 30 years of hidden government documents exposing these vaccine schedules as a complete hoax, not to mention the fraud of the vaccines themselves to provide any real protection against disease.

Though her paper focuses primarily on the British health system’s elaborate cover-up of the dirty truth about its own national vaccination program, the tenets of the study’s findings still apply to vaccination schedules in general, which are typically designed for the purpose of serving corporate interests rather than public health. Government authorities, it turns out, in an ongoing bid to satisfy the private goals of the vaccine industry, have deliberately covered up pertinent information about the dangers and ineffectiveness of vaccines from parents in order to maintain a high rate of vaccination compliance. And in the process, they have put countless millions of children at risk of serious side effects and death.

You can access Dr. Tomljenovic’s full paper here:
http://www.ecomed.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/3-tomljenovic.pdf

Hiding the truth and covering up data to encourage vaccine compliance

Through several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, Dr. Tomljenovic was able to obtain transcripts of private meetings that were held between the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization (JCVI), a so-called “independent expert advisory committee” that makes recommendations to the government about vaccine policy, and various British health ministers over the years. And after poring through this plethora of information, which had previously been veiled from public view, Dr. Tomljenovic made some disturbing discoveries.

“[T]he JCVI (Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization) made continuous efforts to withhold critical data on severe adverse reactions and contraindications to vaccinations to both parents and health practitioners in order to reach overall vaccination rates which they deemed were necessary for ‘herd immunity,’ a concept which … does not rest on solid scientific evidence,” explains Dr. Tomljenovic in the introduction to her paper.

“Official documents obtained from the U.K. Department of Health (DH) and the JCVI reveal that the British health authorities have been engaging in such practice for the last 30 years, apparently for the sole purpose of protecting the national vaccination program.”

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RT ~ ‘Most Transparent Administration’ Violates Federal Transparency Laws

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TheIntelHub | September 28, 2012

Nineteen out of 20 cabinet-level agencies under the Obama administration have failed to follow the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act, thereby disobeying the law that demands disclosure of public information.

White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew said in July that the Obama administration “has been the most transparent ever.”

But an analysis of government requests filed by Bloomberg News has found an alarming number of transparency violations, particularly when it comes to the taxpayer-funded cost of travel by top officials.

“When it comes to implementation of Obama’s wonderful transparency policy goals, especially FOIA policy in particular, there has been far more ‘talk the talk’ rather than ‘walk the walk,’’ Daniel Metcalfe, director of the Department of Justice’s office monitoring the government’s compliance with FOIA requests, told the news agency.

In 2009, the newly sworn in President Obama promised a new standard of transparency that his administration has not upheld – even accepting awards for what he oversaw as “the most transparent administration in history.”

“I will hold myself as president to a new standard of openness… Let me say it as simply as I can: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency,”he said while welcoming his senior staff and cabinet secretaries to his office.

Two years later, the administration continued to boast about its supposed transparency.

“This president has demonstrated a commitment to transparency and openness that is greater than any administration has shown in the past, and he’s been committed to that since he ran for president and he’s taken a significant number of measures to demonstrate that,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in May 2011, before the president accepted an award for transparency.

But Bloomberg’s report highlights specific instances in which secrecy was a normal part of the regime. Under FOIA, the news agency requested documents from 57 federal agencies regarding taxpayer-funded travel.

Only eight of 57 agencies responded within the 20-day timeframe required by the Act. The other agencies are under violation of FOIA for failing to submit the documents on time.

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Andrew Blake ~ Government Rapidly Increases Electronic Surveillance [Video]

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 | September 28 2012

The amount of online data being stored has shot up drastically over the past several years. From photos, to banking information and music, people all across the world are facilitating the access to their private information. So how can we protect ourselves from would be hackers? RT Web Producer Andrew Blake joins us with more on how a recent Freedom of Information Act request shows that the number of vague court orders allowing for the snooping of emails and phone calls has skyrocketed under the Obama administration and how people can protect themselves online.

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Bob Cusack ~ Treasury Probe Cites Officials For Soliciting Prostitutes, Accepting Industry Gifts, FOIA Docs Reveal

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The Hill | July 15 2012 | Thanks, Thomas

Treasury Department officials have been cited for soliciting prostitutes, breaking conflict-of-interest rules and accepting gifts from corporate executives, according to the findings of official government investigations.

The revelations of unethical behavior at Treasury are detailed in little-noticed documents posted this month on governmentattic.org, which publishes agency responses to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

While it is not uncommon for departments within the executive branch to have personnel issues, it is unusual for these types of documents to become public. They provide a rare glimpse of internal probes within the Treasury Department, exposing different episodes of misconduct.

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Paul Joseph Watson ~ Lawsuit: TSA Claims It Can Lie To The Public

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InfoWars | June 8 2012

“TSA Directives” supersede Freedom of Information Act

The engineer who garnered global press attention by proving the TSA’s fleet of body scanners were completely useless is causing the federal agency more embarrassment – by highlighting the fact that the TSA argues that it can lie to the public for “security” reasons.

The claim appears in a lawsuit brought by Jon Corbett over his unlawful detention by TSA officers at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

Corbett was detained for an hour at a TSA checkpoint after he refused to allow security screeners to perform an advanced pat down, which as we have documented often includes TSA agents literally touching people’s genitals.

After filing a Freedom of Information Act request in an attempt to obtain video footage of the incident, Corbett was told by Broward County authorities that “there are no documents, photographs, audio, or video that exist for this request,” despite the fact that the airport was littered with signs saying “Checkpoint under video surveillance,” in addition to Corbett personally seeing “more than a dozen visible camera domes.”

When Corbett included the charge that Broward County and the TSA had lied about the non-existence of the video footage as part of the lawsuit, Broward County attempted to have the judge dismiss the claim because of their belief that lying to the public is acceptable for “security reasons,” in turn tacitly admitting that the footage does exist, which represents a clear violation of the FOIA.

“The County was required by the TSA to withhold that information because it (the existence of video from any particular CCTV camera) constituted SSI (Sensitive Security Information). Any disclosure of the existence of the videotape would have violated both TSA directives and federal regulations pertaining to the disclosure of SSI,” states the lawsuit.

In other words, “TSA directives” apparently allow for the federal; agency to lie to the American public and also supersede the sanctity of the Freedom of Information Act.

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Madison Ruppert ~ Thanks to U.S. Appeals Court We Will Likely Never Know the Details of the NSA-Google Relationship

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End The Lie | May 14 2012

Here at End the Lie we have devoted a significant amount of coverage to Google’s Big Brother activities – which are set to rise exponentially once their recent troubling patent is put into use – not the least of which includes deliberately stealing personal information from Americans with their Street View vehicles, as well as their connections to the U.S. government and intelligence community.

Note: if you would like to block at least some of Google’s tracking methods, you can read this easy to follow guide and implement some of the solutions today.

The tight-knit relationship between the American government (the intelligence community in particular) and Google is becoming increasingly plain to see.

This was made even more blatant in the decision of the Washington D.C. Circuit appeals court which allowed the National Security Agency (NSA) to neither confirm nor deny their relationship with Google.

The NSA – the world’s largest surveillance agency which keeps tabs on Americans and people around the globe – has been given the authority to refuse to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) by the court.

The court ruled that one of the many FOIA exemptions covers any and all documents which supposedly may jeopardize the NSA’s national security mission and that they do not even have to respond to the request.

Potentially, by rejecting the request, they could supposedly reveal some critical secret details of the NSA-Google relationship, according to the court.

“If NSA disclosed whether there are (or are not) records of a partnership or communications between Google and NSA regarding Google’s security, that disclosure might reveal whether NSA investigated the threat, deemed the threat a concern to the security of U.S. Government information systems, or took any measures in response to the threat,” reads the court ruling.

“As such, any information pertaining to the relationship between Google and NSA would reveal protected information about NSA’s implementation of its Information Assurance mission,” they added.

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Suspended Civilization

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James Howard Kunstler (Guest Writer) | USA Watchdog
December 7 2011

Question du jour: why is Jon Corzine still at large? In what fabulous Manhattan restaurants has he been enjoying plates of cockscombs and lobster with sauce hydromel and cinghiale ai frutti di bosco, while less well-connected citizens of this degenerate republic have to order their suppers from the dumpster in the WalMart parking lot where they have been living lately.

Is there still an Attorney General in this country? Will somebody please follow Eric Holder down a hallway and see if he leaves a trail of sawdust on the floor. Or did congress just retract all the fraud statutes by stealth in the same way that the Federal Reserve handed out $7.7 trillion in bailouts back in 2008 (much more than the generally accepted figure of the $800 billion TARP) without anyone finding out until three years later when some Bloomberg reporters rooted the numbers out of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) filing. And by the way, what is the US Federal Reserve doing handing out billions of dollars to the Royal Bank of Scotland? Was Scotland admitted to the Union by stealth, too? Or did Jamie Dimon just buy it as a birthday present for Barack Obama, who likes golf.

This is what life in the USA is like nowadays: sh*t happens and sh*t un-happens, and you find out about it years later. Only a desperate and hopelessly degenerate nation would choose to live this way, in a law-optional society, in which money means everything, and yet nobody even knows what money is (or where it goes, and what it does when it goes there.)

Jon Corzine has not revealed the destination of the loot (somewhere between $600 million and $2.5 billion, estimated) that vanished from the “segregated” accounts of his many clients at MF Global. The rumor is that it went to cover a rude margin call from Jamie Dimon’s bank, JP Morgan, after JC took some unfortunate positions in European sovereign bonds in a bad month. Beyond the question of why Mr. Corzine is not in jail (as a flight risk, just like DSK) is how come the Department of Justice has not so much as issued a statement saying that they were looking into the matter, so as to reassure both the victims and the financial markets that this is not a culture that just makes sh*t up as it goes along – i.e. that we have predictable rules and formal procedures for doing stuff.

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National Lawyers Guild Files FOIA Requests Seeking Evidence of Federal Role in Occupy Crackdown

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Dave Lindorff | Nation Of Change
November 20 2011

With Congress no longer performing its sworn role of defending the US Constitution, the National Lawyers Guild Mass Defense Committee and the Partnership for Civil Justice today filed requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) asking the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA and the National Parks Service to release “all their information on the planning of the coordinated law enforcement crackdown on Occupy protest encampments in multiple cities over the course of recent days and weeks.”

According to a statement by the NLG, each of the FOIA requests states, “This request specifically encompasses disclosure of any documents or information pertaining to federal coordination of, or advice or consultation regarding, the police response to the Occupy movement, protests or encampments.”

National Lawyers Guild leaders, including Executive Director Heidi Beghosian and NLG Mass Defense Committee co-chair and PCJ Executive Director Mara Veheyden-Hilliard both told TCBH! earlier this week that the rapid-fire assaults on occupation encampments in cities from Oakland to New York and Portland, Seattle and Atlanta, all within days of each other, the similar approach taken by police, which included overwhelming force in night-time attacks, mass arrests, use of such weaponry as pepper spray, sound cannons, tear gas, clubs and in some cases “non-lethal” projectiles like bean bags and rubber bullets, the removal and even arrest of reporters and camera-persons, and the justifications offered by municipal officials, who all cited “health” and “safety” concerns, all pointed to central direction and guidance.

As we reported, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan admitted publicly in an interview on a San Francisco radio program earlier this week that prior to her first order to police to clear Oscar Grant Plaza of occupiers on Oct. 25, she had participated in a “conference call” with 17 other urban mayors to discuss strategy for dealing with the movement. At the time of that call, her mayor’s office legal advisor, who subsequently resigned over the harsh police tactics used against demonstrators, says Quan was, significantly, in Washington, DC.

The NLG says the Occupy Movement, which is now in over 170 cities around the U.S., “has been confronted by a nearly simultaneous effort by local governments and local police agencies to evict and break up encampments in cities and towns throughout the country.”

Veheyden-Hilliard says, “The severe crackdown on the occupation movement appears to be part of a national strategy,” which she said is designed to “crush the movement,” an action she describes as “supremely political.”

She adds, “The Occupy demonstrations are not criminal activities and police should not be treating them as such.”

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Obama’s Secrets Belie Campaign Promises Of Transparency In Government

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By Los Angeles Times (Editorial) | RS_News
November 01 2011

The Obama administration should rethink its outrageous proposal that would allow the government to lie to citizens about whether documents exist ~ RSN Editors

EDITORIAL | One of the most disappointing attributes of the Obama administration has been its proclivity for secrecy. The president who committed himself to “an unprecedented level of openness in government” has followed the example of his predecessor by invoking the “state secrets” privilege to derail litigation about government misdeeds in the war on terror. He has refused to release the administration’s secret interpretation of the Patriot Act, which two senators have described as alarming. He has blocked the dissemination of photographs documenting the abuse of prisoners by US service members. And now his Justice Department has proposed to allow government agencies to lie about the existence of documents being sought under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA.

At present, if the government doesn’t want to admit the existence of a document it believes to be exempt from FOIA, it may advise the person making the request that it can neither confirm nor deny the document’s existence. Under the proposed regulation, an agency that withholds a document “will respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist.”

This policy is outrageous. It provides a license for the government to lie to its own people and makes a mockery of FOIA. It also would mislead citizens who might file an appeal if they knew there was a possibility that the document they sought was in the possession of a government agency. Such an appeal would allow a court to determine whether the requested document was covered by an exemption in FOIA.

Even without the new rule, federal law enforcement agents have denied the existence of important documents. In a lawsuit involving surveillance of Muslim organizations in Southern California, the FBI was reprimanded by a federal judge. “The Government cannot, under any circumstance, affirmatively mislead the court,” wrote Judge Cormac J. Carney. The FBI justified its misrepresentation by citing national security.

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The Patriot Act, Cyber-Edition

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By Zachary Katznelson (American Civil Liberties Union) | Reader Supported News

24 October 11

FOCUS | Cybersecurity is the new buzzword in Washington, capturing a wide range of potential responses to internet-related threats both real and imagined. Congress is starting to play a role, considering legislation that purports to make cyberspace more secure. But many of the solutions being offered echo those of the deeply flawed Patriot Act, enacted ten years ago this month.

Just as the Patriot Act swept aside long-standing constitutional protections against government prying into private lives, current cybersecurity proposals threaten to expand the government’s ability to collect personal information – even when there is no indication that the people targeted have been involved in any wrongdoing.

Over the past decade, we have learned that such policies fail on two fronts: they are largely ineffective and they violate civil liberties.

The Patriot Act presumes that if the government could know more of what we do with our daily lives by monitoring our e-mails and phone calls, downloading our financial transactions, and tracking our locations, it could spot patterns and find terrorists. The Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches have mattered little as claims of national security swept such concerns aside.

That thinking has led even further, to warrantless wiretapping and government databases so massive that numbers most of us have never heard of (like yottabytes) have to be used to quantify the data taken in. But counter-terrorism officials consistently lament being swamped with reports and analyses while trying to come to grips with the astronomical amount of data our powerful computers struggle to collate and interpret. In seeking the needle of terrorism, we have built the biggest haystack in history.

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