Justice Dept. Withdraws Proposal To Lie About FOIA Info

[bigtree]

November 3, 2011 2:07 pm

The Justice Department said Thursday that it has decided to withdraw a controversial provision to proposed transparency regulations that would have allowed government agencies to mislead people about the existence of information in response to Freedom of Information Act Requests . . .

Ronald Weich, Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Office of Legislative Affairs, said in a letter that the department not include Section 16.6(f)(2) when issuing final regulations.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, praised the decision to drop Section 16.6(f)(2) in a news release shortly after Weich sent his response to Grassley.

“For five decades, the Freedom of Information Act has given life to the American value that in an open society, it is essential to carefully balance the public’s right to know and government’s need to keep some information secret,” he said. “The Justice Department’s decision to withdraw this proposal acknowledges and honors that careful balance, and will help ensure that the American people have confidence in the process for seeking information from their government.”


read more: http://www.mainjustice.com/2011/11/03/justice-department-withdraws-controversial-foia-rule-proposal/

[tblue]

1. I want Leahy to be our Senate Majority Leader.

And what is up with this JoD? Why the hell did they even entertain the thought?

[tk2kewl]

2. they could just be lying

:mad:

[alc]

3. it's too much of a hastle to get permission

It's much easier to just lie and ask forgiveness if you get caught.

[RC]

5. Yep, that's what they been doing anyway. They were just trying to make it legal.

[SteveM]

6. I'm afraid you may be right about this. nt

[bigtree]

7. right, as the man said

". . . the department only wants to exclude sensitive information from FOIA requests “in the most transparent manner possible.”

So, now they'll just do it in the most secretive way possible.

[SteveM]

4. More of the corrosive Bush-era "unitary presidency" ideology...

...kept intact and nourished by the Obama administration. In a realpolitik incompetence, the Justice Dept. first proposes the regulation to "legalize lying," then drops the proposal after showing its hand. I wonder if the Fast & Furious and Gun-walker scandals had anything to do with this.

[ProSense]

8. OpenTheGovernment: DOJ Withdraws Controversial Change to FOIA Regs

DOJ Withdraws Controversial Change to FOIA Regs

We join Senator Leahy in commending the Department of Justice on withdawing the controversial section (16.6 (f)(2)) from their proposed revisions to the Department's FOIA regulations. As we noted, the provision would have amended the FOIA regulations to allow the DOJ, when it determined that requested documents it holds fit within exclusions under 5 U.S.C. section 552(c), to respond to a FOIA request by falsely stating that no records exist.

The 1986 Attorney General Meese memo to which DOJ refers in its letter to Senator Leahy says "Where an exclusion is employed, the agency is legally empowered to "treat" the excluded records as not subject to the FOIA at all. Accordingly, a requester can properly be advised in such a situation that "there exist no records responsive to your FOIA request." This is not what the now-withdrawn provision said.

We are pleased to note that DOJ will require that records be kept of any uses of an exclusion -- and its approval -- and that the number of times an agency invokes exclusions be publicly reported in the Chief FOIA Officer Report for that agency.