How the Trump Administration May Be Skirting Its Own Ethics Rules; ProPublica via Mother Jones, March 7, 2017

Justin Elliott, ProPublica via Mother Jones; 

How the Trump Administration May Be Skirting Its Own Ethics Rules

"There are multiple signs the Trump administration is not aggressively policing ethics issues beyond its handling of the rules on lobbyists. In January, Trump's team cancelled a previously scheduled ethics and leadership training course for White House appointees, Politico reported. The White House Counsel's office also gave a pass to Trump aide Kellyanne Conway for violating ethics rules by urging Americans to buy Ivanka Trump's clothing line.

During the Obama administration, the White House posted copies of ethics waivers on its website. Obama issued a handful to former lobbyists during his eight years in office.

The current White House website still has a page for ethics waivers, but it is empty. It states: "Ethics pledge waivers will be published as they become available.""

Data disappeared from Obama administration site promoting transparency; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 22, 2017

Tracie Mauriello, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 

Data disappeared from Obama administration site promoting transparency

"If you wanted to know who visited the White House, how much the president’s secretary is paid, or which state has the most federally funded teaching positions, the information was just a few clicks away. With a bit more technical knowledge, you could explore public data sets to analyze the president’s budget, or look for trends in government spending.

No more.

Dozens of data sets disappeared last week from Open.WhiteHouse.gov, a website the Obama administration created to promote government transparency.

Visitors to the website now and find a message saying “check back for new data.” But it isn’t clear when any new data will be posted, and government watchdogs aren’t confident that it will ever happen.

“We are working to open up the new sites,” White House press aide Helen Ferre emailed in response to questions. She did not respond to follow-up questions about the content of the “new sites,” whether they will include visitor logs, why data sets were removed, and when aides will post new information...

The data the Obama administration provided hasn’t been deleted. Rather it’s been preserved by the National Archives in accordance with a law that prohibits federal data from being destroyed. Find it at https://open.obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/...

The data is no longer in a user-friendly format. Users have to have the technical knowledge to unpack zipfiles and must have software that can handle large files with millions of rows of data."

Trump White House takes down website pages about disabilities; Washington Post, 1/20/17

Emma Brown, Washington Post; Trump White House takes down website pages about disabilities

"From The Post’s Answer Sheet blog by Valerie Strauss:

During the Obama administration, there was a page on the White House website that had information about federal policy regarding people with disabilities. Its URL was https://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/disabilities. Not under the Trump administration. The Trump-run White House website — which went live moments after Friday’s inauguration of President Trump — says: “You are not authorized to access this page.”...

Read the rest of the story here."

Why We Shouldn’t Mourn The Obamas’ Departure From The White House; Huffington Post, 1/19/17

Zeba Blay, Huffington Post; 

Why We Shouldn’t Mourn The Obamas’ Departure From The White House

"The Obamas meant many things to many people. To some they meant the fruition of the American Dream. To others they meant the destruction of it. There are millions of Americans who are emphatically glad to see Obama go, who are blissfully excited about a Trump presidency and its vague promise to “make America great again.” 

And there are millions of Americans who feel as if a loved one has just died. But no one has died. If we should take anything away from the legacy of these last eight years, it’s that there is no president who can save us from our collective demons. Only we can do that.

For those whose hearts are breaking, it may seem pithy and banal to use the quote: “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”

But really. Don’t cry. Because the Obamas get to be citizens again, for one thing. They get to move out of the line of fire of an almost constant, condensed stream of racial hate. But also ― we got to witness this. For better or worse. We witnessed a black president. And for centuries to come, children of all races and backgrounds will see his face looking up at them from their history textbooks, and they will take for granted the profundity of it.  

There’s actually a streak of that intangible thing called “hope” to be found in the Obama’s departure. For many of us, the prospect of the next four years seems bleak. But if Barack Obama could get through eight years as a black president in America with his sanity and his dignity intact, and even effect a little change, perhaps there is room for some cautious optimism. At the very least, we can try."

Obama’s Secrecy Problem; Slate, 4/15/16

Fred Kaplan, Slate; Obama’s Secrecy Problem:

"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."

Obama claimed to want transparency. His actions suggest the opposite; Guardian, 3/9/16

Trevor Timm, Guardian; Obama claimed to want transparency. His actions suggest the opposite:

"The Obama administration has taken a lot of well-deserved criticism over the years for claiming to be the most transparent presidency ever while actually being remarkably opaque, but they’ve now reached a new low: newly released documents show they aggressively lobbied Congress to kill bipartisan transparency reform that was based on the administration’s own policy.

In a move open government advocates are calling “ludicrous”, the administration “strongly opposed” the passage of bipartisan Freedom of Information Act (Foia) reform behind closed doors in 2014. The bill was a modest and uncontroversial piece of legislation which attempted to modernize the law for the internet age and codify President Obama’s 2009 memo directing federal agencies to adopt a “presumption of openness”.

Through a Foia lawsuit, the Freedom of the Press Foundation (the organization I work for) obtained a six-page talking points memo that the Justice Department distributed to House members protesting virtually every aspect of the proposed legislation in incredibly harsh language – despite the fact that some of the provisions were based almost word-for-word on the Justice Department’s own supposed policy (you can see a side-by-side comparison here).

Worse, Vice’s Jason Leopold is also reporting that the administration is conducting similar lobbying efforts around this year’s attempt to reform Foia in time for the law’s 50th anniversary this summer.

This is a shameful move by an administration that is constantly touting its open government and transparency bona fides despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary."

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."

I Disclose ... Nothing; New York Times, 1/21/12

Elisabeth Rosenthal, New York Times; I Disclose ... Nothing:

"IN New York and a growing number of American cities, diners are encountering sanitary grades in restaurants’ windows — A, B or C. That system is an example of helpful disclosure, researchers say: information that is simple and comprehensible, important to recipients and easily acted upon. I recently chose between outwardly identical Japanese noodle shops on East Ninth Street in Manhattan based on the system, walking into the A rather than the B.

But as greater disclosure has become the go-to solution for a wide range of problems — from unethical campaign financing to rising corporate carbon emissions — it has often delivered lackluster results, researchers say.

Just last week, the Obama administration announced plans to require drug companies to disclose a wide variety of payments and gifts to doctors, from speaking fees to the purchase of breakfasts for office staffs, in the hope of reducing commercial influence on prescribing practices. President Obama has promised to run the most open, transparent administration in history. But is more disclosure the solution?"

Report: Obama administration to appoint Web privacy czar; ArsTechnica.com, 11/12/10

Jacqui Cheng, ArsTechnica.com; Report: Obama administration to appoint Web privacy czar:

"The US government is preparing to appoint a privacy czar and introduce legislation to address growing concerns over Internet privacy."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/11/report-obama-administration-to-appoint-web-privacy-czar.ars