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OTG in NYT Front Page Story on Facial Recognition

A little-known start-up helps law enforcement match photos of unknown people to their online images — and “might lead to a dystopian future or something,” a backer says. Until recently, Hoan Ton-That’s greatest hits included an obscure iPhone game and an app that let people put Donald Trump’s distinctive yellow hair on their own photos…

Congress Must Reassert Check on Executive Branch After Trump Airstrike Against Iran

Statement of Lisa Rosenberg, Executive Director, Open the Government. Note: The U.S. drone strike that recently killed top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in Iraq stirred talk of war as Iran, vowing to retaliate, launched missile strikes against two Iraqi military bases that house U.S. forces. Iran had also announced it would no longer abide by the terms

LA Times Op-Ed: We need the full truth about the CIA’s torture program

The new movie “The Report” is a powerful telling of the story of the Senate investigation into the horrors of the CIA’s torture program and the fight to allow the public to see what the government had done in its name. Yet to this day, the full 6,700-page report produced by the Senate Select Committee

OTG Launches New Torture Report Timeline

From the launch of the investigation into the Central Intelligence Agency’s detention and interrogation program in 2009 to present day, click through time in OTG’s new behind-the-scenes summary of the key milestones in the fight to prevent the public from reading the torture report. The Torture Report Timeline is designed to be a tangible resource

Investigating the Use of Facial Recognition: A Joint Project with MuckRock

Across the country, facial recognition technology is being quietly acquired and used by government agencies of all sizes. More than half of all adults in the United States are in at least one database used for facial recognition, according to an estimate from the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law. The full extent

Private Prison Information Act: Senator Cardin Introduces Legislation Following OTG Hill Briefing

Open the Government and the ACLU co-hosted a briefing at the Russell Senate Office Building to discuss the lack of accountability surrounding private prisons, jails, and detention centers that house federal inmates. After sharing opening remarks at the event, Senator Ben Cardin officially introduced S. 2773, the Private Prison Information Act (PPIA), which would mandate private

A FOIA Win: Interior’s final rule drops changes that would have stifled public requests

The Department of Interior published its final Freedom of Information Act regulations, with significant changes from proposed revisions first issued in December 2018. The changes address concerns of public interest groups that urged the agency to remove harmful secrecy provisions from its initial proposal. The final rule comes after Interior’s proposed rule changes drew widespread

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