[Infowarrior] - FOIA: Don't look behind the curtain

[Richard Forno]

Obama wants us to believe he's been transparent. But don't look behind the curtain
Trevor Timm
The administration is shielding itself from Foia requests and threatening members of Congress who want to increase openness while lauding its own transparency initiatives

Wednesday 18 March 2015 10.17 EDT 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/18/obama-transparency-foia-sunshine-week

The Obama administration publicly patted itself on the back this week for their supposed unmatched commitment to openness and accountability. But if you want to understand the White House’s actual commitment to transparency, don’t listen to their speeches or press releases - look at what they were doing quietly, off stage.

On the very same day as the administration was hailing its non-existent transparency achievements during an event for Sunshine Week, it was also permanently shielding a key White House office from the Freedom of Information Act (Foia). The White House Office of Administration, which is in charge of archiving White House emails, had accepted Foia requests for 30 years, until the Bush administration convinced a court they didn’t have to in 2007. Open government groups are up in arms that the Obama White House is making Bush’s secrecy policy permanent and declaring the entire office off-limits to the public. (This week, in another event that also shows their true colors, the administration threatened to prosecute any members of Congress who reveal details of a controversial trade deal draft that many public interest groups want to be made public.)

The Justice Department - where the administration held its Sunshine “celebrations” - is tasked with enforcing Obama’s now-notorious pledge to be the Most Transparent Administration in History™. (A detailed study by the Associated Press released today found the Obama administration, six years after its pledge, denied more Foia requests and censored more files than ever in 2014 - beating the record they set last year.) Their celebration of “progress” each year around this time is usually accompanied by eye rolls from observers, given that the Justice Department has continually been singled out as one of the worst agencies when it comes to complying with Obama’s transparency directive.

But this year’s Justice Department event deserves particular derision, since the Justice Department secretly helped prevent the very modest and uncontroversial Foia Improvements Act from passing Congress last December. The act had already been passed by both houses unanimously and just needed to be voted on by the House one more time to make sure the Senate and House language lined up. At the last minute, Representative John Boehner refused to bring the bill to the floor.

Only later, did we learn that a few federal agencies, notably the Justice Department, lodged complaints with Congress about the bill that kept it from going to a vote.

The worst part? The Justice Department’s objection was over language that was based virtually word for word on their own Foia policy, which was signed by Eric Holder in 2009 (see a comparison here). They effectively lobbied against making their own policy law - which says a lot about whether they actually uphold that policy in the first place.

After Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, in which her use of a private email server thwarted dozens of public records requests – and the recent news that her fellow presidential candidate Jeb Bush took seven years to comply with Florida open records laws – there’s no better time for Congress to champion Foia reform. Senator Patrick Leahy renewed a call for Congress to do just that this week.

While they’re at it, Congress should add government email retention laws with teeth and provide more funding to cash-strapped Foia offices, so that agencies can actually handle the increased load of requests they have been receiving since the internet has made filing requests easier for the average citizen.

More and more people want information on what their government is doing on their behalf. Ignoring those requests won’t make them go away. Nor will the government’s self-congratulation on “transparency” fool anyone. So why not do something actually meaningful and pass Foia reform.

	• This article was updated on 18 March 2015 with information on the newest AP study of the Obama administration’s transparency efforts.

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