Public deserves open access; Daily Press, June 10, 2017

Marisa Porto, Daily Press; Public deserves open access

"American writer Walter Lippman once wrote, "The best servants of the people, like the best valets, must whisper unpleasant truths in the master's ear."

His quote describes perfectly the mission of a newspaper and its staff.

That mission remains at the heart of why Americans should be concerned about the state of the Freedom of Information Act around this nation.

This year alone, journalists from my news organization have filed dozens of FOIA requests. The topics they asked about ranged from bus accidents to crime statistics to how millions of dollars of taxpayer money was spent on a private business venture at our local airport. The last request sparked a statewide investigation, prompted a change in state law and has caused the firing of the airport director and the resignation of one top city official — so far...

Playwright Arthur Miller once said, "A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself."

Let's keep the conversation going."

U.S. Sets New Record For Denying, Censoring Government Files; Associated Press via Huffington Post, 3/18/15

Associated Press via Huffington Post; U.S. Sets New Record For Denying, Censoring Government Files:

"The Obama administration set a new record again for more often than ever censoring government files or outright denying access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, according to a new analysis of federal data by The Associated Press.

The government took longer to turn over files when it provided any, said more regularly that it couldn't find documents, and refused a record number of times to turn over files quickly that might be especially newsworthy.

It also acknowledged in nearly 1 in 3 cases that its initial decisions to withhold or censor records were improper under the law — but only when it was challenged."

No Classified Emails by Clinton? Some Experts Are Skeptical; New York Times, 3/11/15

Scott Shane, New York Times; No Classified Emails by Clinton? Some Experts Are Skeptical:

"“As a longtime critic of the government’s massive overclassification, I thought it was a refreshing touch that the secretary of state conducted all her email in unclassified form,” said Thomas S. Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University. He spoke with a hint of sarcasm — his nonprofit organization has battled the government for decades to overcome classification claims and try to make important official documents public.

Mrs. Clinton insisted that she kept classified information out of her email, as the law required. Storing classified information in a personal, nongovernment email account on a private computer server, like the one at Mrs. Clinton’s home, would be a violation of secrecy laws.

And relations with other countries are particularly subject to secrecy claims. “Foreign government information” — information received from another government with the expectation that it will be held in confidence — is an official category of classified information in secrecy regulations.

A former senior State Department official who served before the Obama administration said that while it was hard to be certain, it seemed unlikely that classified information could be kept out of the more than 30,000 emails that Mrs. Clinton’s staff identified as involving government business.

“I would assume that more than 50 percent of what the secretary of state dealt with was classified,” said the former official, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to seem ungracious to Mrs. Clinton. “Was every single email of the secretary of state completely unclassified? Maybe, but it’s hard to imagine.”

Steven Aftergood, who directs the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, said he suspected that if there had been no fuss and a researcher or journalist had sought all of Mrs. Clinton’s emails under the Freedom of Information Act, the answer might have been different."

Hillary Clinton Tries to Quell Controversy Over Private Email; New York Times, 3/10/15

Amy Chozick and Michael S. Schmidt, New York Times; Hillary Clinton Tries to Quell Controversy Over Private Email:

"“I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal emails instead of two,” she explained. She asked, in effect, that voters trust that she was disclosing more of them than she needed to — and even to credit her with an unusual degree of transparency.

Mrs. Clinton said she turned over some 30,490 emails to the State Department in December, nearly two years after leaving office. But she said she had deleted nearly 32,000 others.

Her confirmation that she and her aides had chosen which emails to make available to the State Department raised new concerns about Mrs. Clinton’s power to decide which records of her tenure as secretary would be available to congressional investigators, to journalists filing Freedom of Information Act requests, and to history."

Associated Press Threatens Legal Action Over Request for Hillary Clinton Information; New York Times, 3/4/15

Ravi Somaiya, New York Times; Associated Press Threatens Legal Action Over Request for Hillary Clinton Information:

"The Associated Press said Wednesday that it was considering legal action over unfulfilled Freedom of Information Act requests for government documents covering Hillary Rodham Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.

In its requests, the AP asked for her full schedules and calendars and for details on the State Department’s decision to grant a special position to a longtime Clinton aide, Huma Abedin, among other documents. The oldest request, the news organization said, was made in March 2010.

“We believe it’s critically important that government officials and agencies be held accountable to the voters,” said AP’s general counsel, Karen Kaiser. “In this instance, we’ve exhausted our administrative remedies in pursuit of important documents and are considering legal action.”"

Republican Congressman Proposes Tracking Freedom of Information Act Requests; New York Times, 1/29/11

Eric Lipton, New York Times; Republican Congressman Proposes Tracking Freedom of Information Act Requests:

"But his extraordinary request worries some civil libertarians. It “just seems sort of creepy that one person in the government could track who is looking into what and what kinds of questions they are asking,” said David Cuillier, a University of Arizona journalism professor and chairman of the Freedom of Information Committee at the Society of Professional Journalists. “It is an easy way to target people who he might think are up to no good.”...

Yearly, the federal government receives about 600,000 FOIA requests, as they are called, a vast majority from corporate executives seeking information on competitors that might do business with the government. A much smaller number comes from civil libertarians, private citizens, whistle-blowers or journalists seeking information on otherwise secret government operations."