After 43 Years, Activists Admit Theft At FBI Office That Exposed Domestic Spying - NBCNews

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65. Here's why

Freedom of Information Regulations: Still Outdated, Still Undermining Openness

Majority of Agencies Have Not Updated FOIA Rules to Meet Either Obama's 2009 Order or Congress's 2007 Law


Washington, DC, March, 2013 – A clear majority of federal agencies have failed to update their Freedom of Information Act regulations to comply either with Congress's changes to the law in 2007 or President Obama's and Attorney General Holder's changes to the policy in 2009, according to a revised government-wide audit published today by the independent non-governmental National Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org) to mark Sunshine Week.

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Because agencies have not changed their FOIA regulations, some are still charging improper FOIA fees (and being defended in court by the Justice Department), and OGIS has had to conduct agency-by-agency outreach to inform FOIA shops of its mission which includes working to solve FOIA disputes through mediation rather than court battles.

An even larger number of agencies – 59 out of 100 – ignored the 2009 Obama-Holder guidance in their regulations. That guidance declared a "presumption of disclosure," encouraged discretionary releases even when the information might technically be covered by an exemption, if there was no foreseeable harm, ordered proactive online publication of records of greatest interest to the public, and told agencies to remove "unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles."

Despite Holder's guidance, the government used the "discretionary" b(5) exemption 66,353 times last year, actually rising 17.9 percent from the previous year. (The number of FOIA requests processed rose only 5.3 percent.) Though there have been some examples of proactive posting of documents (including the Department of Interior's and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's ongoing posting of Deepwater Horizon documents), "unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles" such as petty fee disputes and endless interagency referrals still frustrate requesters and lead in some case to twenty-year-old FOIA requests.

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB417/

OR

FOIA Requests Being Denied More Due To Security Reasons Than Any Time Since Obama Took Office

People submitted more than 590,000 requests for information in fiscal 2012 – an increase of less than 1 percent over the previous year. Including leftover requests from previous years, the government responded to more requests than ever in 2012 – more than 603,000 – a 5 percent increase for the second consecutive year.

When the government withheld or censored records, it cited exceptions built into the law to avoid turning over materials more than 479,000 times, a roughly 22 percent increase over the previous year. In most cases, more than one of the law's exceptions was cited in each request for information.

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U.S. courts are loath to overrule the administration whenever it cites national security. A federal judge, Colleen McMahon of New York, in January ruled against The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union to see records about the government's legal justification for drone attacks and other methods it has used to kill terrorism suspects overseas, including American citizens. She cited an "Alice in Wonderland" predicament in which she was expected to determine what information should be revealed but unable to challenge the government's secrecy claim. Part of her ruling was sealed and made available only to the government's lawyers.

"I find myself stuck in a paradoxical situation in which I cannot solve a problem because of contradictory constraints and rules – a veritable Catch-22," the judge wrote. "I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret."

OR: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024294717

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