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Supreme Court Ruling Hurts Open Government

On April 29 the Supreme Court unanimously decided that that Virginia, and by extension any state, is not obligated to honor or respond to FOIA requests from people not residing in the state.

05/14/2013

Groups Recommend Changes FOIA Litigation Data Report

OpenTheGovernment.org joined the Center for Effective Government and others in welcoming the decision by the Office of Information Policy (OIP) at the Department of Justice (DOJ) to make data from the 2012 FOIA Litigation and Compliance Report available in a machine-readable for

05/14/2013

An Unconscionable Intrusion

We recognize the necessity for the government to protect properly classified information and to ensure that information that would clearly cause harm to our national security is not incautiously released. However, the revelation today that the Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for the Associated Press is deeply disturbing. Seizing the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines exceeds anything that could be justified by any specific investigation of disclosures of classified information to the media.

05/13/2013

Public Information about Government Data Will Improve With New Obama Policy

The Obama Administration released an Executive Order and a Policy Directive today that move the federal government forward in a significant direction -- officially requiring that, going forward, data generated by the government be made available in open, machine-readable formats (with appropriate protections). Most notably, it requires that agencies create and maintain an “enterprise data inventory, if it does not already exist, that accounts for datasets used in the agency's information systems" -- with the ultimate goal of including all agency datasets, and with indications whether the agency has determined that the individual datasets may be made publicly available and whether these are currently available to the public.

05/09/2013

The FOIA Process and Common Problems

Our blog, Managing FOIA, has covered some of the many frustrations the public encounters when trying to use FOIA to get government records. We thought it might also be useful though, to take a more holistic look at the federal FOIA process, and some of the most common problems.

05/08/2013

Secrecy Check: Surveillance and the FISA Court

In 2012, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) approved every single one of the federal government’s 1,856 applications made to it for authority to conduct electronic surveillance and/or physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes.

05/03/2013

Improving the FOIA Reform Bill, HR 1211

As many of you may know, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee recently passed a bill authored by the Committee's Chair and Ranking Member, Representative Darrell Issa and Representative Elijah Cummings, to improve the federal government's system of processing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

04/30/2013

A Deep Dive in the US' National Action Plan: Declassify National Security Information

In our final evaluation of the government's efforts to meet the open government commitments it included in the 2011 US National Action Plan, we characterized many of the steps the government promised to take as "small." Rather than taking bold measures to address pressing transparency issues, the Plan includes to make commitments that were less ambitious and more easily attained. The Administration's commitment related to declassification of historical documents is more accurately described as something less than a small step, however: the commitment -- to set up the National Declassification Center -- was something that the government had already completed well in advance of the release of the Plan. President Obama's Executive Order on Classified National Security Information, EO 13526, required the creation of the NDC at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The Center began operations in January 2010.

04/25/2013

SECURE IT's "Technical Amendment" is Really a Massive Change to FOIA

The recently-introduced Strengthening and Enhancing Cybersecurity by Using Research, Education, Information, and Technology Act (SECURE IT), HR 1468, includes a "technical amendment" that actually would be one of the most far-reaching substantive changes to the Freedom of Information Act’s (FOIA) exemptions since 1986.

04/17/2013

Secrecy Check: Security Clearance Numbers Appear to Grow; Exact Number Still Murky

For the past three years, one aspect of the growth of the classified universe has been indicated by the number of security clearances. On October 1, 2012 personnel deemed eligible for clearance numbered 4,917,751, a 1.1 percent growth from the year before. Of course, these numbers do not tell the whole story. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) is required to report on the number of personnel “deemed eligible” for clearance, not the number of personnel granted access to classified information. Employees are given access on a “need to know” basis. Apparently, ODNI does not think the public needs to know that information. We disagree: an increase in clearances means more individuals who could derivatively classify documents, funneling more classified documents into an already overloaded and broken declassification system.

04/16/2013

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