The FOI ADVOCATE
Oct. 28, 2003 Vol. 4, No. 1
The E-Newsletter of the National
Freedom of Information Coalition:
"A government by secrecy benefits no one. It injures
the people it seeks to serve; it damages its own integrity
and operation. It breeds distrust, dampens the fervor of its
citizens and mocks their loyalty."
-- 110 Congressional Record 17, 087 (1964) (Statement of Senator
Long)
A Publication
of The Freedom of Information Center
A
Unit of the Missouri School of Journalism
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"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to
protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.
Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion
of their liberty by
evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in
insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without
understanding." -- Justice Louis Brandeis, 1928
TOP OF THE NEWS
CANADIANS FAST-TRACK THE TOUGH STUFF: Thanks again to SEJ’s
FOI alert for this nice tip…The Toronto Star in September
2003 published the results of a year-long investigation into
the use and misuse of Ontario's Freedom of Information Act.
The probe found that Ontario's Tory government had set up
a special "contentious issues" track for FOI requests.
All requests from media and opposition members were automatically
routed to the contentious issues track for special handling.
Many had to do with environment and energy. But the list of
contentious issues and requests to FOIA. Voilà! —
a series was born. The probe, done by the Atkinson
Fellowship in Public Policy, found that the government
carefully tracked the chances that requested information could
lead to embarrassing questions from the opposition in the
provincial
parliament.
UNITED STATES:
“The Office of the Vice President's unwillingness to
provide the [Task Force] records or other related information
precluded GAO from fully achieving its objectives and substantially
limited GAO's ability to comprehensively analyze the [Task
Force] process.”
-- The GAO’s final report on the Vice President’s
energy task force, August 26, 2003
THERE”S NO NEWS LIKE NO NEWS: "There will
be no arrival ceremonies for, or media coverage of, deceased
military personnel returning to or departing from
Ramstein [Germany] airbase or Dover [Del.] base, to include
interim stops," the Defense Department said, referring
to the
major ports for the returning remains.
9/11 COMMISSION COULD SUBPOENA FILES: The
chairman of the federal commission investigating the Sept.
11, 2001, terror attacks says that the White House is continuing
to withhold several highly classified intelligence documents
from the panel and that he is prepared to subpoena the documents
if they are not turned over within weeks. The chairman, Thomas
H. Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, also
said in an interview on Friday that he believed the bipartisan
10-member commission would soon be forced to issue subpoenas
to other executive branch agencies because of continuing delays
by the Bush administration in providing documents and other
evidence needed by the panel. "Any document that has
to do with this investigation cannot be beyond our reach,"
Mr. Kean said on Friday in his first explicit public warning
to the White House that it risked a subpoena and a politically
damaging courtroom showdown with the commission over access
to the documents, including Oval Office intelligence reports
that reached President Bush's desk in the weeks before the
Sept.
11 attacks.
OOPS: Secrecy News reports that the Army has taken
one of its popular web sites offline after the Washington
Post reported on a critical account of U.S. intelligence posted
on the site.
The web site of the Center for Army Lessons Learned (call.army.mil)
was promptly disabled following a Post story about an "unusually
blunt" report on the inadequacies of U.S. military intelligence
in Iraq.
However, the report itself, on "Observations from Operations
Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom," from the October
2003 CALL Newsletter, has been helpfully posted by the Washington
Post:
It was first reported in "Intelligence Problems in Iraq
Are Detailed" by Thomas E. Ricks, Washington
Post, October 25:
ROBOTS AT WORK IN WHITE HOUSE: Thanks again
to Secrecy News for this delicious tidbit!
It seems the White House is blocking search engines
from accessing much of the White House web site,
particularly web pages relating to Iraq. As a result, these
web pages cannot be directly accessed through external search
engines such as google.com.
The White House employs a "robots.txt" file which
"disallows" search engine access to over a thousand
specified directories.
The matter was first noticed and discussed on this web
page:
Say, for example, that you want to find the White House web
page where President Bush made this remarkable statement on
October 3:
"See, free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations
don't attack each other. Free nations don't develop weapons
of mass destruction."
You can't get there from Google, because the page is blocked
by the White
House robots.
The matter was first noticed and discussed
on this web
page:
ANTI-TERROR NEWS
"They should not be trotting out
federal flight-deck officers to say good things about the
[TSA] program while muzzling pilots who are critical of the
program. It's a double standard." -- Brian Darling,
a lobbyist for the Coalition of Airline Pilots Associations,
which represents pilots at American Airlines, Southwest, UPS,
Airborne Express and AirTran, in a Washington Post story on
the secrecy surrounding the airport security issue. TSA spokesman
Brian Turmail said any pilot is free to express his views
about the program, so long as he is not identified by name.
THE NEW OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT: John
Dean writes that, “Except in a few highly egregious circumstances
relating to national security information (espionage and atomic
secrets), the U.S. Congress has, in the past, never made it
a crime to leak information to the news media. As a result,
for over two hundred years, our government has operated without
an "official secrets act." In contrast, Great Britain
and other nations have long criminalized the disclosure of
government information. But there's a crucial difference between
them and us: They lack an equivalent of our First Amendment.
Despite the free speech costs, President
George W. Bush has created the equivalent of an official secrets
act for America - and it is only growing stronger. Indeed,
by cobbling together provisions from existing laws, Bush's
Justice Department has effectively created one of the world's
most encompassing, if not draconian, official
secrets acts…”
BALANCING SAFETY, ACCESS? Some poxes
consistently make news -- smallpox, chicken pox, monkeypox.
But the less frequently mentioned mousepox helped instigate
a growing tug of war that pits national security concerns
against research freedom in the biological sciences.
The mousepox incident began in Australia,
far removed from Washington, D.C., where a panel of geneticists,
biochemists, ethicists and national security experts gathered
testimony that shaped their recently released report, "Biotechnology
Research in an Age of Terrorism: Confronting the 'Dual Use'
Dilemma."The group, assembled by the National Academy
of Science's National Research Council, recommends that experiments
with a high potential to be misused by bioterrorists be reviewed
by fellow scientists, either before researchers begin work
or before that work is published. The intention is to halt
the flow of information to nefarious elements, while keeping
the review process in the hands of scientists, rather than
government
regulators.
See
the report, "Biotechnology Research in an Age of
Terrorism: Confronting the 'Dual Use' Dilemma," National
Research Council of the National Academies
TSA MUZZLING DEBATE? The Transportation
Security Administration is muzzling debate of security initiatives
by labeling too many of the agency's policies and reports
as too sensitive for public dissemination, according to pilots,
flight attendants and consumer advocates.
The agency labels documents and details of
programs as "security sensitive information" far
more often than the Federal Aviation Administration did. The
FAA oversaw air security before the TSA, which was created
after the terrorist attacks in 2001. Many critics agree that
some information, such as the number of undercover air marshals
in the agency's program and intelligence given to airport
screeners about possible terrorist threats, is sensitive.
But they argue that the refusal to release other information
seems overzealous.
For example, last week the TSA held an open
meeting of aviation and security representatives about a report
on ways to improve air cargo security, but key attendees were
barred from discussing details of the report's findings during
the session. The agency refused to release the report because
it contained what the TSA deemed sensitive
material.
CHEMICAL SECURITY WOULD NIX ACCESS: The
Society of Environmental Journalists excellent FOI Alert says
that the Senate Environment Committee will mark up its latest
try at a chemical security bill. It would black out information
on the hazards of unsecured chemical facilities — and on whether
effective measures were being taken to make them safe.
The move comes as several major media organizations
— CBS' "60 Minutes," CNN, New York Times, and the
Wall Street Journal among them, are preparing major exposés
of chemical security problems (according to industry
reports). Such coverage would be difficult or impossible under
secrecy provisions of the bill, S 994.
The bill essentially leaves the chemical
industry on the "honor system" to address gaping
security holes which for two years since 9/11 have, critics
say, left millions of Americans unprotected from facilities
terrorists could use as weapons of mass destruction. Little
public or government oversight of the effectiveness, or even
implementation, of security plans would be possible under
the new draft bill fielded by GOP members of the Senate panel.
Not only does it make disclosure of such information illegal,
but it allows the industry to set its own standards for security
plans, and does not require that they be carried out.
The committee marked up the Corzine bill
July 25, 2002, reporting an amended version (S Rpt. 107-342)
to the full Senate. At that time, the Senate was narrowly
controlled by Democrats, and the Environment Committee was
chaired by James M. Jeffords (I-VT). The chemical industry
strongly opposed that version of the bill, and the full
Senate took no further action before control
shifted from Dems to GOP in the Nov. 2002 election. S 994,
which comes before the committee this week, is the work of
its new chairman James M. Inhofe (R-OK), who vehemently opposed
the original Corzine bill. Inhofe has reportedly agreed to
modify his bill as introduced with a substitute to garner
support from eco-friendly committee Republicans such as Lincoln
Chafee (RI), giving him the one-vote margin he needs to move
a bill. Both the Inhofe bill and the substitute have non-disclosure
provisions.
EPIC SUES JUSTICE DEPT: A civil liberties
group sued the Justice Department on Tuesday seeking internal
documents about lobbying by federal prosecutors to discourage
Congress from approving major changes to the Patriot Act.
The Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center
sought quick release of documents related to an Aug. 14 memorandum
from Guy A. Lewis, the director of the executive office for
United States Attorneys.
In his August memo, Lewis urged prosecutors
"to call personally or meet with ... congressional representatives"
to argue against an amendment offered by Rep. C.L. "Butch"
Otter, R-Idaho, that would cut federal funds for so-called
"sneak and peak" warrants in terror cases. Such
warrants allow the FBI, with a judge's approval, to sneak
into a suspect's home, office or vehicle for surveillance
without immediately notifying the target of the investigation.
They are among the most controversial provisions of the Patriot
Act, which allowed expanded use of such searches.
GENERAL FOI NEWS
EVEN PUBLISHERS ARE UPSET! One of
the nation's leading newspaper executives took the Bush administration
to task for what he termed an "unsettling trend toward
governmental secrecy." Tony Ridder, chairman of the Newspaper
Association of America, the industry's largest and most important
trade organization, said “the resultant fear, frustration
and anger felt by many veteran journalists in the nation's
capital are "unprecedented, even going back to the dark
days of Watergate."
Ridder, chairman and CEO of Knight Ridder
Inc., which, with 31 daily papers is the nation's second-largest
newspaper chain, noted that “George W. Bush had held only
nine formal news conferences since taking office, "far
fewer than any recent president." According to Ridder,
at this point in their presidencies, Bill Clinton had held
33, George H.W. Bush, 61, and Ronald Reagan, 18. http://www.jsonline.com/news/nat/oct03/175778.asp
IT’S ALL HERE IN BLACK AND WHITE:
The Justice Department, after stonewalling media requests
for more than a year, has finally posted an outside consultant's
study of the agency's efforts to ensure diversity in the
workplace. Reporters, who had filed requests under the
Freedom of Information Act for the 186-page report by KPMG
Consulting -- a report that mostly likely cost taxpayers
a few hundred grand -- at last got a chance to see it. And
there it was, in stark black and white: half white, the other
half blacked out by department officials, who noted the law
permits concealing "pre-decisional deliberative information."
How about under "the key findings of the study"?
The first five are blacked out. But the sixth paragraph says,
"The department's attorney workforce is more diverse
than the U.S. legal workforce." Somehow, that critical
"pre-decisional deliberative information" was left
in. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61602-2003Oct21.html
PENTAGON BRINGS RECORDS BACK ONLINE:
The Pentagon restored Internet access Thursday to hundreds
of unclassified documents that it recently took offline, including
directives on myriad topics, from defining policies on conscientious
objectors to displaying flags at half-staff.
The Associated Press reported Wednesday that
The Memory Hole, a Web site that archives documents
and news stories that have disappeared from the Internet,
posted the directives shortly after the Defense Department
removed them earlier this month.
Steven Aftergood, who reported the developments
in his Secrecy News newsletter, said before access
was restored that the disappearance was the latest example
of public documents being taken down from government Web sites
after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The directives are freely available in printed
form and are used by contractors, job seekers and people with
family members in the military, said Aftergood. He said his
organization, the Federation of American Scientists,
would invoke the federal Freedom of Information Act to challenge
their removal.
"If
we want an open and accountable government, we need this type
of information in the public domain," Aftergood said
Wednesday.
DOCS BLOWING WHISTLE FACE RETRIBUTION:
America's physicians, sworn to protect their patients from
harm, increasingly face a surprising obstacle -- their own
hospitals. In medical centers as small as Centre Community
Hospital in State College and as prestigious as Yale and Cornell,
doctors who step forward to warn of unsafe conditions or
a colleague's poor work say they have been targeted by hospital
administrators or boards. During the past 10 months, the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has examined cases across the United
States in which physicians who spoke up about poor care faced
reprisals, including peer review hearings, demotions, temporary
loss of credentials, involuntary transfers or outright dismissal.
In one Missouri case, a physician was cited for violating
patient confidentiality after he pushed for further investigation
into possible serial murders
at the hospital.
IN THE STATES
CONCEALED WEAPONS, CONCEALED PERMITS: Something will be concealed
besides pistols when Missouri sheriffs begin issuing permits
this month to pack hidden handguns: the names of a projected
60,000 gun licensees.
Missouri's new law, enacted when the Legislature overrode
Gov. Bob Holden's veto last month, bars identification of
concealed weapons permit holders -- even though separate applications
to sheriffs to purchase guns have been open records for years,
and remain so. The new law makes it a misdemeanor for law
enforcement to disclose names of holders of concealed gun
permits issued by Missouri sheriffs starting Oct. 11.
An Associated Press review of the four concealed gun laws
enacted this year -- in Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri and
New Mexico -- showed that each bars public identification
by name of permit holders. Legislation was filed but not approved
this year in at least two other states, Tennessee and Texas,
to close currently accessible listings by name of concealed
gun permit holders. http://www.semissourian.com/story.html$rec=121381
AHNOLD AN OPENNESS GEEK? California’s newly elected
governor, who has been less than forthcoming on virtually
every issue related to his candidacy, and who had his employees
routinely sign non-disclosure agreements, has had an 11th-hour
conversion to openness.
In a newly released policy statement, the new governor says:
“Sacramento is too often controlled by special interest groups
and the people's business is ignored. Arnold believes this
form of government is not true to the ideals of this nation
and that it is not fair to the people of California. Californians
should have a constitutional right to open government.
The records of government are currently regulated by, among
others, the California Public Records Act, the Legislative
Open Records Act, the Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act, and the
Ralph M. Brown Act. These are essential laws to protect
the public's right to know what their government is up to.
But they are full of exceptions that leave the public in the
dark.
I endorse State Constitutional Amendment (SCA) 1, sponsored
by the California First Amendment Coalition and the California
Newspaper Publishers Association and supported by prominent
groups such as the League of Women Voters and Common Cause.
SCA 1 would make access to government documents and open meetings
a civil right. I have one change to SCA 1 - I would eliminate
the special protection from public scrutiny of proceedings,
records, and deliberations of "the Legislature, the Members
of the Legislature, and its employees, committees, and caucuses."
There is no reason why the Legislature should be shielded
from the antiseptic
of sunshine…”
E-MAIL VICTORY: A Freedom of Information Act hearing
officer has sided with a Record-Journal reporter who claimed
the Board of Education violated FOI laws governing
e-mails.
The state's Freedom of Information Commission will make an
official ruling on Oct. 22 regarding a complaint filed
by reporter Evan Goodenow. However, Hearing Officer Barbara
E. Housen recommended that the full commission rule that
School Superintendent Kenneth V. Henrici's administrative
e-mails are public information.
Goodenow filed the complaint on May 6, after he was denied
access to e-mails concerning information technology sent between
Henrici, Assistant Superintendent LeRoy Hay, Randall Backus
and Paul Picard.
Backus is director of information technology for the board,
Picard president of the teachers' union.
After a preliminary hearing, Housen stated in a letter dated
Oct. 6 that the e-mails are "public records, and that
while Henrici and the co-respondent, Wallingford Public Schools,
were not acting in bad faith, they were violating state statutes
in denying Goodenow access to the e-mails."
"This is not an attempt to spy on people's private conversations
about things unrelated to the public's business. We're just
trying to get a handle on how things run and why they run
that way," Goodenow said. "Any and all written or
electronic correspondence involving board members or Board
of Education personnel should be readily accessible
to the public."
MONTANA AUDIT IN: In a remote corner of northeastern
Montana, the Daniels County sheriff said he didn't care what
the law said: He wasn't about to let anyone see his list of
recent crime calls without a court order. The school superintendent
in Ennis insisted his salary is information reserved only
for his local citizens and not strangers from out of town.
A District Court clerk in Chinook took it upon herself to
censor the know about."
Those were among the responses from government officials
that greeted a statewide effort to test the freedom-of-information
guarantees found in Montana's
constitution and laws.
THE DATING GAME: Responding to recent highly publicized
romances that went awry between subordinates and their supervisors
in Gwinnett law enforcement, county officials have begun drafting
a policy on employee dating. The policy will mainly address
personal relationships between supervisors and their subordinates,
according to Lynn Smith, acting human resources director for
Gwinnett County. It is expected to be finished within the
next few months, Smith said. “We’ll have to decide what type
of changes would need to be made if a supervisor were to become
involved with an employee,”
she said.
CAN SOMEONE FIX THIS THING? Milwaukee police say they
still can't work a database meant to help identify problem
officers, almost three months after city officials said computer
experts would help make the information available in a week,
if police cooperated. The Journal Sentinel reported the database
dysfunction in August, in a story about how the Police Department
stopped systematically tracking use-of-force incidents years
ago.
In recent weeks, the city and police have traded a flurry
of letters blaming each other for the database mess. The city
says its employees fixed the program and fully trained police
on how to use it. The police say the city only corrupted
the program; every time they try to search on an incident,
they say, the database reports that a dog was involved.
Fire and Police Commission Chairman Robert "Woody"
Welch likened the dispute to a "playground
squabble" that may not be resolved until police Capt.
Nan Hegerty becomes chief next month.
STUDENT PAPER SUES OVER ACCESS TO DUI FILES: The student
newspaper of the University of Alaska Fairbanks is suing the
university to obtain campus police records of Fairbanks North
Star Borough
Assemblyman Rick Solie's drunken driving arrest in August.
The Sun Star filed its lawsuit after the university denied
requests made by the college newspaper, the Fairbanks Daily
News-Miner and KTVF-TV to release the material. Solie and
his wife, Cherie, also are named as defendants. Cherie Solie
is head of the Fairbanks office of Gov. Frank Murkowski. "For
me, it's a First Amendment issue that needs to be resolved,"
said Sharice Walker, editor of the newspaper. "It's kind
of an issue of clarifying the public records laws and media
access." Plus, "the arrest happened in our backyard,"
the senior journalism student said. University police arrested
Solie on a charge of driving under the influence and refusing
to submit to a chemical test after he was stopped at shortly
before 3 a.m. Aug. 30 for driving on the wrong side of Tanana
Loop, according to court documents.
ANONYMITY, ANYONE: The woman who accused Middle Tennessee
State University President Sidney McPhee of sexual harassment
expected her identity to be concealed, based on a reading
of MTSU policy, and was ''stunned'' to learn that it might
be made public, according to a complaint that her attorney
filed in a Rutherford County court this week.
Chancellor Robert E. Corlew III issued a temporary restraining
order Thursday to stop the Tennessee Board of Regents from
releasing the MTSU employee's harassment complaint, which
she filed Oct. 6 and withdrew Tuesday. A hearing on whether
the complaint is covered by the Tennessee Open Records Act
will be scheduled within two weeks.The Tennessean and other
news organizations have requested copies of the complaint
under that law, and the Board of Regents, which oversees MTSU,
had planned to release them Thursday night after finding no
legal
reason to withhold them.
PLUGGING THE BUDGET THROUGH FOIA: Anyone who files
a Freedom of Information Act request for public records
with the Farmington Public School District may have to start
digging deeper into their pockets. The district is expected
to raise the cost for FOIA requests, one of the policy
revisions being considered at its 7:30 p.m. meeting Tuesday
at the administration offices on Shiawassee Road in Farmington.
If approved, charges for labor will include fringe benefits,
including FICA and retirement costs. The district is allowed
to charge the hourly wage of the lowest-paid employee capable
of compiling the information. Revenues are deposited into
the district's general fund.
Sometimes requests require work by more than one department,
said Judy Steinhebel, assistant to Cheryl Cannon, executive
director of operations. If the information must be compiled
by someone other than the lowest-wage employee, the higher
wage will be calculated.
Steinhebel couldn't readily estimate the total number of
Freedom
of Information requests last year, but said answering
those requests is time consuming.
NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS: If an Ohio business is under
investigation by the state for health violations, people may
no longer know about it.
Included in a bioterrorism bill expected to pass a state
Senate committee today is a provision sealing all state health
department investigations from public view until they are
completed. Current law shields only individuals. But the
bill, at the request of health department officials, would
make a one-word change in state law, protecting the identity
of all businesses as well. The main purpose of the bioterrorism
bill is to improve Ohio's response to a biological terror
attack through changes to the duties of the state health department.
Critics argue the issue of protecting the identity of businesses
under investigation has nothing to do with the bill's
overall intent.
INTERNATIONAL
BANGLADESH: ONE OF 12: Bangladesh figures on a list
of 12 countries without the freedom of information law and
the 'habits of secrecy' contributes to corruption that leaches
away economic lifeblood, a Commonwealth rights group said.
The 'Open Sesame', the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative
(CHRI) report, 2003, says 42 others of 54-member Commonwealth
either have specific laws that guarantee access to information
or explicit constitutional guarantees.
"Research shows…countries with access to information
laws are…perceived to be the least corrupt. In 2002, of the
10 countries scoring best in Transparency International's
annual Corruption Perceptions Index, no fewer than eight have
effective legislation enabling the public to see government
files," the report said. "Of the 10 countries perceived
to be worst when it comes to corruption, not even one had
a functioning access to information regime."
Bangladesh was pegged as the most corrupt country for three
straight years from 2001 to 2003 by the Transparency
International.
THAILAND: THAIS GAINING GREATER ACCESS: An amendment
to the Official Information Act, to go before cabinet
this month, will widen public access to information held by
the state.
Changthong Opas-siriwit, director of the Office of the Official
Information Commission, said the bill made the prime minister
chairman of a board comprising 30 commissioners -- 10 each
from state agencies, independent organisations and specialists
from the private sector.
Under the present law, board members comprise mainly government
officials. The board would select and appoint panels to consider
requests from the public for disclosure
of official information.
ARGENTINA: POLICE ARCHIVES OPENED: Argentinian authorities
have released decades-old secret police archives, saying they
provide new details about police involvement with the military
during the country's dictatorship. The archives were gathered
by Buenos Aires police over four decades and contain more
than 3.5m pages of information on the social and political
activities of more than 250,000 people. The files also contain
information gathered by the intelligence branch about the
activities of unions, political parties and other groups which
were closely monitored. The files were discovered in 1998
behind a wall in a building that now houses the Commission
for Memory, a human rights group which is overseeing their
preservation.
The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a Buenos Aires-based
human rights organisation, said the release of the archives
was a step toward airing the full truth about Argentina's
1976-83 military dictatorship. At least 9,000 people disappeared
during the what became known as the "dirty
war", though human rights groups estimate the number
was around 30,000.
GHANA: ACCESS LEADS TO A FAIRER PRESS: Cyril Acolatse,
member of the National Media Commission on Monday stated in
Sunyani that a Right to Information Law would drastically
stem the overly speculative and sensational journalism in
the country.
Indeed, civic and responsible journalism, the cultivation
of well-informed populace and the promotion of a vibrant democracy
warrant such a law in Ghana, he said.
Mr. Acolatse was delivering a paper on, "The Right
to Information and the Need for Right to Information Law in
Ghana" at a public seminar on the Right to Information
organized by the Accra Office of Commonwealth Human Rights
Initiative, an NGO, in collaboration with the British Council.
The seminar was one of a series being conducted throughout
the country to collate public views on the Right to Information
Act, which, among others is meant to provide for the right
of access to information to enable an individual to have access
to personal information held by a government agency or a private
body which relates to the individual.
The Act will also protect personal information held by government
agency or a private body from being disclosed in order to
preserve the person's
personal privacy.
JAMAICANS STILL WORKING: INFORMATION: Minister Burchell
Whiteman is hoping to get the much anticipated Access to Information
Act passed in the Senate today.
Two weeks ago, passage of the Act was suspended in the Upper
House for the second time because the Opposition disagreed
with a proposed amendment which Whiteman insisted was designed
to offer legal protection to specified documents in government's
control.
Whiteman was at pains to explain Wednesday that the amendment
would effectively mean that the public would have access only
to documents in seven state entities initially approved and
which have indicated their readiness, instead of all government
entities at the same time.
ON THE OP-ED PAGES: WHAT SOME ARE SAYING ABOUT OPEN GOVERNMENT
Samuel Dash, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center
and chief counsel of the Senate Watergate Committee in 1973-74,
opens an interesting line of debate: “If, as now seems
likely, top White House aides leaked the identity of an American
undercover agent, they may have committed an act of domestic
terrorism as defined by the dragnet language of the Patriot
Act their boss wanted so much to help him catch terrorists.
Section 802 of the act defines, in part, domestic terrorism
as "acts dangerous to human life that are a violation
of the criminal laws of the United States or of any state"
that "appear to be intended to intimidate or
coerce a civilian population."
Clearly, disclosing the identity of a CIA undercover agent
is an act dangerous to life - the lives of the agent and her
contacts abroad whom terrorists groups can now trace - and
a violation of the
criminal laws of the United States…”
AUSTRALIA: The Australian on FOI and its importance
to democratic scrutiny: “It has caused John Howard to defend
himself in parliament over the contentious ethanol issue,
it has revealed the federal Government's cover-up of the
sex slave trade and it has exposed the disparity in access
to bulk billing that has split the country. The Freedom of
Information Act has helped Australian
journalists uncover the truth behind the some of the most
critical political issues of our times…”
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