Tag Archives: Freedom of information legislation

RT ~ ‘Most Transparent Administration’ Violates Federal Transparency Laws

Posted on by
1

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.

Continue reading →

Andrew Blake ~ Government Rapidly Increases Electronic Surveillance [Video]

Posted on by
3

 | 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.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

US Declares Assange An Enemy Of The State [Video]

Posted on by
1

 | September 27 2012

On Wednesday night, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange spoke the United Nations General Assembly during a “Strengthening Human Rights” event. In his speech, Assange implored President Obama to do the right thing when it came to whistleblower Bradley Manning and criticized the administration for not practicing what it preaches when it comes to free speech. Shortly before Assange’s address, it has been learned through a Freedom of Information Act request that the US has declared the Wikileaks founder an enemy of the state and Kristinn Hrafnsson, Wikileaks spokesperson, joins us with the latest developments.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Michael Grabell ~ TSA Reveals Passenger Complaints Four Years Later

Posted on by
Reply

Nation Of Change | May 5 2012

From intrusive pat-downs to body scans to perceived profiling, the Transportation Security Administration always seems to be the target of complaints.

Here’s another one: It took the TSA almost four years to tell me what people complained about — in 2008.

In my first week at ProPublica in June 2008, I filed a public records request for the agency’s complaint files. Such records can provide good fodder for investigations.

For example, amid the brouhaha over the agency’s introduction of intensive full-body pat-downs in 2004, I requested complaints and discovered an untold story of the pain and humiliation suffered by rape victims and breast cancer survivors. In one incident that I found from that request — while I was a reporter at the Dallas Morning News — a woman complained that a screener asked her to remove her prosthetic breast to be swabbed for explosives.

When I made a similar FOIA request in 2008, I assumed the TSA would respond in a few months. Government agencies have about a month to respond to public record requests, though they often take longer. I figured even if their response took months, I’d be able to repeat it regularly to get a timely, inside look as to what passengers were complaining about and find out about incidents that required some more digging.

Boy, was I wrong.

After waiting and waiting and narrowing my request and some more waiting, the files finally arrived this week.

The information is now four years old — but it echoes much of what people are still complaining about.

For instance, an elderly woman in a wheelchair was asked to walk through security and fell at Orlando International Airport.

Lessons from Iceland ~ The People Can Have the Power

Posted on by
Reply

by Birgitta Jónsdóttir (The Guardian UK) | Common Dreams
November 15 2011

As early progress in Iceland shows since the banking collapse, the 21st century will be the century of the common people, of us

The Dutch minister of internal affairs said at a speech during free press day this year: “Law-making is like a sausage, no one really wants to know what is put in it.” He was referring to how expensive the Freedom of Information Act is, and was suggesting that journalists shouldn’t really be asking for so much governmental information. His words exposed one of the core problems in our democracies: too many people don’t care what goes into the sausage, not even the so-called law-makers, the parliamentarians.

If the 99% want to reclaim our power, our societies, we have to start somewhere. An important first step is to sever the ties between the corporations and the state by making the process of lawmaking more transparent and accessible for everyone who cares to know or contribute. We have to know what is in that law sausage; the monopoly of the corporate lobbyist has to end – especially when it comes to laws regulating banking and the internet.

The Icelandic nation only consists 311,000 souls, so we have a relatively small bureaucratic body and can move quicker then in most countries. Many have seen Iceland as the ideal country for experimentation for new solutions in an era of transformation. I agree.

We had the first revolution after the financial troubles in 2008. Due to a lack of transparency, corruption and nepotism, Iceland had the third largest financial meltdown in human history, and it shook us profoundly. The Icelandic people realized that everything we had put our trust in had failed us. One of the demands during the protests that followed – and that resulted in getting rid of the government, the central bank manager and the head of the financial authority – was that we would get to rewrite our constitution. “We” meaning the 99%, not the politicians who had failed us. Another demand was that we should have real democratic tools, such as being able to call directly for a national referendum and dissolve parliament.

As an activist, web developer and poet, I never dreamt of being a politician and nor have I ever wanted to be a part of a political party. That was bound to change during these exceptional times. I helped create a political movement from the various grassroots movements in the wake of the crisis. We were officially created eight weeks prior to the election, and based our structure on horizontalism and consensus. We had no leaders, but rotating spokespeople; we did not define ourselves as left or right but around an agenda based on democratic reform, transparency and bailing out the people, not the banks. We vowed that no one should remain in parliament longer then eight years and our movement would dissolve if our goals had not been achieved within eight years. We had no money, no experts; we were just ordinary people who’d had enough and who needed to have power both within the system and outside it. We got 7% of the vote and four of us entered the belly of the beast.

Continue reading →

Obama’s Secrets Belie Campaign Promises Of Transparency In Government

Posted on by
Reply

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.

Continue reading →

The Patriot Act, Cyber-Edition

Posted on by
Reply

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.

Continue reading →