Dorothy Wickham, The Guardian; In 35 years’ reporting from Solomon Islands, I have never seen such secrecy as the last few months
"As we deal with the attention our country is getting since the signing of the security agreement with China, it is now more important than ever to have a free press and a government that wants to communicate their actions to their people."
"I’ve never been able to fit the concepts of privacy, history and encryption together in a satisfying way, though it continues to seem that I should. Each concept has to do with information; each can be considered to concern the public and the private; and each involves aspects of society, and perhaps particularly digital society. But experience has taught me that all I can hope to do with these three concepts is demonstrate the problems that considering them together causes."
"“It is repulsive that Ailes is trying to force this extremely serious matter into a secretive, rigged system where Ms. Carlson’s chances of getting justice are far lower even if everything she alleges is true,” notes Bland. “The problems of secrecy in arbitration are really highlighted in this case — you look at all of the women who have come forward with very similar stories, and you can see why Ailes would prefer to keep a lid on all of this by avoiding the public court system where the evidence becomes a matter of public record.” That’s something to keep in mind the next time Chris Wallace or Bret Baier gripes about breakdowns in government transparency. Another thing to consider is that Carlson worked at Fox News for 11 years, presiding in some way over thousands of hours of programming. Over all those hours, Carlson was adjudged reliable and honest enough such that Ailes and his lieutenants placed their precious Fox News audience in her hands. Now, all of the sudden, she has become the source for her lawyers’ dissemination of “one false and defamatory statement after another.” Even you, Roger Ailes, can’t have it both ways."
"THE PRINCIPLE of holding government to account is at the bedrock of U.S. democracy, and information about government decisions is essential for that accountability. The Freedom of Information Act, although not something every citizen comes in contact with, remains a vital tool for keeping government open and honest. While not perfect — not every request results in disclosure of information or documents — it at least offers a law-based process for citizens to seek information from the powerful. Does a citizen in a place like China or Russia have such a chance to pull aside the curtains of secrecy with a simple letter? No... First signed into law 50 years ago this weekend by a reluctant President Lyndon Johnson, the FOIA has had asignificant impact... Federal agencies have often starved their FOIA departments for resources; the new law will not change that. Backlogs stretch for years. A related issue is excessive national security overclassification, which seems to have grown worse. But this is not a moment to complain. The fact that the FOIA exists after a half-century and is being amended with bipartisan support is a testament to a working democracy."
"County officials in recent days have rolled out new online tools to make certain types of public information more accessible. Controller Chelsa Wagner on Thursday debuted alleghenycounty.opengov.com, which features graphs, charts and sortable data about spending, vendors, employees, salaries and benefits. She also introduced allegheny.openbookportal.com, providing instant access to contracts with vendors... Local governments are getting better at providing basic financial and vendor information to the public, and some officials, such as city Controller Michael Lamb, take pride in providing easy access to public information... Across the state, however, access to public documents is uneven, and obtaining anything beyond routine documents, such as annual budgets, often involves a cumbersome right-to-know process in which the government agency drags its feet and attempts to keep secret anything potentially embarrassing or controversial. Incremental progress on openness should be applauded, but it is important to remember that the larger battle is far from won."
"Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, told me Thursday, “This is a time of particularly promising ferment over secrecy policy. There is a recognition, even within the national-security apparatus, that the classification system has overreached and needs to be pruned back.” Yet by all measures, the bureaucracies persist in resisting this pruning, Congress won’t allocate the money for the shears, and the president hasn’t mustered the full attention and commitment that the task requires. Information may want to be free, but Washington has it wrapped in a tangle."
"The top U.S. intelligence official is considering eliminating the lowest tier of classification for government information. The possible change comes amid a heated controversy over the so-called over-classification of materials and an FBI probe into whether classified information on Clinton's private email server was mishandled. In a recent memo, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper asked the heads of the country's intelligence agencies "whether the CONFIDENTIAL classification level can be eliminated" from agency guides as well as "the negative impacts this might have on mission success." In his memo, Clapper said the change "could promote transparency," specifically noting how the United Kingdom "successfully eliminated CONFIDENTIAL without impact in April 2014.""
"Reinforcing the Obama administration’s planned “comprehensive effort to declassify” historical records on Argentina’s dirty war, the National Security Archive today posted examples of the kinds of materials in U.S. government files that would most likely enhance public understanding of that troubled period in Latin American history. The posted documents, relating not just to regional developments but to official U.S. policy and operations, were declassified either through similar government decrees -- thus setting a useful precedent for current administration officials -- or the U.S. Freedom of Information Act."
"One chapter appears to give the signatory countries (referred to as “parties”) greater power to stop embarrassing information going public. The treaty would give signatories the ability to curtail legal proceedings if the theft of information is “detrimental to a party’s economic interests, international relations, or national defense or national security” – in other words, presumably, if a trial would cause the information to spread... “The text of the TPP’s intellectual property chapter confirms advocates warnings that this deal poses a grave threat to global freedom of expression and basic access to things like medicine and information,” said Evan Greer, campaign director of internet activist group Fight for the Future. “But the sad part is that no one should be surprised by this. It should have been obvious to anyone observing the process, where appointed government bureaucrats and monopolistic companies were given more access to the text than elected officials and journalists, that this would be the result.”"
"Mr. Harper’s war against science has been even more damaging to the capacity of Canadians to know what their government is doing. The prime minister’s base of support is Alberta, a western province financially dependent on the oil industry, and he has been dedicated to protecting petrochemical companies from having their feelings hurt by any inconvenient research. In 2012, he tried to defund government research centers in the High Arctic, and placed Canadian environmental scientists under gag orders. That year, National Research Council members were barred from discussing their work on snowfall with the media. Scientists for the governmental agency Environment Canada, under threat of losing their jobs, have been banned from discussing their research without political approval. Mentions of federal climate change research in the Canadian press have dropped 80 percent. The union that represents federal scientists and other professionals has, for the first time in its history, abandoned neutrality to campaign against Mr. Harper. His active promotion of ignorance extends into the functions of government itself. Most shockingly, he ended the mandatory long-form census, a decision protested by nearly 500 organizations in Canada, including the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Canadian Catholic Council of Bishops. In the age of information, he has stripped Canada of its capacity to gather information about itself. The Harper years have seen a subtle darkening of Canadian life."
"The debunking of a recent academic paper on changing views about same-sex marriage has raised concerns about whether other political science research is being properly vetted and verified. But the scandal may actually point to vulnerabilities in a different field: public polls. After all, the graduate student who wrote the paper on same-sex marriage, Michael LaCour, was called to account. Basic academic standards for transparency required him to disclose the information that ultimately empowered other researchers to cast doubt on his findings. But even before the LaCour case, it was becoming obvious that a different group of public opinion researchers — public pollsters — adhere to much lower levels of transparency than academic social science does. Much of the polling world remains shielded from the kind of scrutiny that is necessary to identify and deter questionable practices."
