Judicial Watch: White House Visitor Logs are Subject to the FOIA

Judicial Watch, a public interest organization that has sued seeking White House visitor logs from January 20, 2009 to the present, is taking the Justice Department to task for a statement the Department made in an April 21 court filing. The Justice Department claimed White House visitor logs are not subject to the FOIA, arguing cases cited by Judicial Watch in its Motion for Partial Summary Judgment were "incorrectly decided" and that releasing the logs would compromise national security.

Judicial Watch maintained that the visitor logs are subject to FOIA as they are "created by" the U.S. Secret Service and that they remain "under agency control."

For more information, click here.

Committee to Protect Journalists Says Obama's FOIA Approach Needs "Teeth and Muscles"

The Committee to Protect Journalists says the Obama administration's Open Government Initiative needs "teeth and muscles if the new promise is to produce any better results" than previous administrations.

Citing failures of the military to be forthcoming about various incidents, including the 2007 New Baghdad shooting where U.S. forces fired on Iraqi civilians, killing many, including two Reuters journalists. After the website WikiLeaks posted a classified video online on April 5, the Pentagon posted a redacted assessment of the incident, concluding U.S. troops fired "in accordance with the law of armed conflict and rules of engagement."

Read more here.

Could Better FOIA Response Have Averted the Massey Energy Mine Disaster?

A January 2010 inspection report covering the Massey Energy Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia shows a federal safety inspector saw a flawed ventilation system and was told "not to worry about it," reports The Huffington Post. The company was fined $70,000 for an "unwarrantable failure" to follow safety rules. The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward Jr. first reported about the documents, which weren't released by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) until more than a week after the April mine explosion.

The timing leaves journalists wondering if a more transparent MSHA could have averted the mine disaster. The Huffington Post reports how Ellen Smith, the managing editor of the Mine Safety and Health News newsletter, used to praise MSHA for its freedom of information work until the Bush administration used the 9/11 attacks as a reason to clamp down on information. Despite the Obama administration's emphasis on improved transparency, Smith thinks disclosure has gotten worse under Obama.

Read more here.

Cutting Off Rights to Records for "Vexatious Requesters"

Frustrated after receiving repeated requests for President Obama's birth certificate, the Hawaii House Judiciary Committee heard a bill permitting government officials to ignore so-called "birthers" who won't give up the claim that Obama is ineligible to serve as president because he doesn't meet constitutional requirements.

If the measure passes, the state Office of Information Practices could deem an individual a "vexatious requester" and restrict rights to government records for two years.

The Associated Press reports Rep. Cynthia Thielen (R-Kaneohe-Kailua) questioned, "Do we really want to be known internationally as the Legislature that blocked any inquiries into where President Obama was born?"

Attorney Peter Fritz suggested the state simply respond that it would only answer each person's request once, instead of passing a law to punish repetitive requests for open records.

Read more about SB2937 here.

Hawaii Agency Testifies in Favor of "Vexatious Requester" Law

Hawaii's Office of Information Practices, a state Executive branch, testified in support of a bill that would give the agency authority to label certain requesters of state government "vexatious."

The Acting Director of the OIP Cathy Takase said state law does not permit an agency to ignore a records request "even where there may be a legitimate justification for not responding."

Proponents of the bill cite repeated requests to the Hawaii Department of Health for access to President Barack Obama's birth certificate, despite the fact that President Obama posted a copy of the certificate on his former campaign website.

Read more here.

White House Announces Open Government Working Group Officials

The White House unveiled the names of the 34 government agency managers who will form the Open Government Working Group, part of the Obama administration's Open Government Directive.

The Working Group will focus on transparency, accountability, participation and collaboration in the U.S. government. Other senior officials in each federal agency will be accountable for the quality of information released to the public.

For more information, click here.

Now Following Robert Gibbs on Twitter

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs joined Twitter last week. Gibbs said he'll "ask the lawyers" if his tweets are subject to the Presidential Records Act of 1978.

For more on the 140-character tweets of the press secretary, click here.

Washington Post and Obama Disagree Regarding Administration's Open Government Track Record

The Washington Post reports that 319 lawsuits were filed under the Freedom of Information Act during Obama's tenure in the White House so far, and plaintiffs complain that little has changed since the Bush administration in terms of openness, despite Obama's promise that his administration would be the most open in history. The paper reports that 278 records suits were filed in 2007 and 298 in 2008.

But the White House responded, contradicting the report and saying that 22 fewer FOIA cases were filed in 2009 than 2008, and the Department of Justice has granted 13% more FOIA requests in 2009 than it did during the Bush administration.

Short Documentary Film Traces First Year of Obama's Open Government Initiative

Check out this video from Delib. It's a short documentary about the first year since Obama's Open Government memorandum and features interviews with such insiders as Beth Noveck, Tim O'Reilly, and Jeffrey Levy, among others.

Federal Agency Datasets Now Available; Interactive Transparency Tracker Marks Progress

Federal agencies have posted nearly 300 new sets of raw data online as part of the Open Government Directive.

Click here for ProPublica's interactive chart, the Transparency Tracker, which provides an independent assessment of the federal agencies' efforts toward more open governmental transparency

Columbia Journalism Review Rates Obama's First Year on Transparency Issues

The Columbia Journalism Review has issued its report card on Obama's first year in office, grading him on transparency and access issues and finding there's still plenty of work to be done.

Click here to see Obama's marks on use of the state secrets privilege, FOIA, the Open Government Directive, online data, White House Visitor Records, a journalist's shield law, and background briefings.

Obama Issues New Executive Order for Classified Documents

President Obama's recent executive order and accompanying presidential memorandum declares that "no information may remain classified indefinitely." The executive order is part of an overhaul of the executive branch's system for protecting classified national security information.

The executive order requires agency heads to conduct a periodic review of the agency's classification guidelines to ensure that classified information that no longer requires protection can be declassified.

Obama also eliminated a 2003 rule by the Bush administration that allowed the leader of the intelligence community to veto decisions by an interagency panel to declassify information. Under the Obama rule, spy agencies who object to a decision will have to appeal to the president.

Obama also established a new National Declassification Center at the National Archives to streamline the process of declassifying historical documents and set a four-year deadline for processing a 400-million page backlog of such records, including archives relating to military operations during World War II and the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

For more information, see the New York Times article here.

Open Government Initiative's Progress Report

The White House's Open Government Initiative published this post with a link to its Progress Report on Open Government to the American People regarding the Obama administration's goal to increase government transparency, participation, and collaboration. Check it out - it's quite good, actually.

Obama Administration Releases Open Government Directive

This morning, the Obama administration released its Open Government Directive, which calls for "transparency, participation and collaboration" by all federal departments and agencies. It seeks to "create and institutionalize a culture of open government."

The initiative directs the governmental departments and agencies with specific requirements and deadlines. It will allow the public to soon have immediate access to all sorts of federal information and will provide for public feedback on the quality of information provided.

See the Directive here.

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Obama Delays Release of Historic Military and Intelligence Reports

Despite pledging to expand governmental transparency, President Obama has granted an open-ended extension to agencies for releasing millions of pages of military and intelligence documents that were scheduled to be declassified by the end of the year.

The documents date from World War II to the early 1980s and cover foreign relations, intelligence activities and military operations with the exception of nuclear weapons data.

The Boston Globe reports Obama delayed the release of the historic documents because his administration has been unable to prod spy agencies into conformance with agencies "engaged in turf battles over how documents should be evaluated" and have reviewed only a fraction of the materials to determine if their release would jeopardize national security.

Get more information here.

Chicago's Mayor Daley Sued for Olympic Bid Information

Non-profit Judicial Watch is suing Chicago's Mayor Daley and his office for failing to respond to a FOIA request for access to public records regarding Chicago's bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics.

The request seeks all correspondence between the Mayor's Office and President Obama, Michelle Obama, and White House staff regarding the bid.

More here.

First Eight Months of Obama White House Visitor Logs Still Guarded

The White House settled a lawsuit with the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and announced last month that it would voluntarily publish White House visitor logs on its website beginning December 31.  So one might except that the Obama administration would release similar records to other public interest groups in the meantime.

Not so.  Through the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Secret Service said White House visitor logs fall under the Presidential Records Act, and thus are not subject to disclosure under the FOIA because they don't originate with a federal agency.  The Secret Service denied the request of judicial watchdog group, Judicial Watch, for visitor log records from January 20  - September 15.

Judicial Watch issued a press release expressing its intent to continue to seek release of the records in question.  

More here.  

Bad Obama -- Health Care Negotiations Taking Place Behind Closed Doors

Despite campaign promises to reform health care in the sunlight of public scrutiny, Obama's allowing health care legislation negotiations to take place behind closed doors.  Senators Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.) as well as top White House aides are trying to merge competing versions of the legislation into one bill.

Republicans and open government advocates are upset by the secretive process.

More here.

Provision in a Homeland Security Funding Bill Would Block Release of Torture Photos

The American Civil Liberties Union says a provision of the homeland security funding bill could block the release of photos of prisoners abused in U.S. custody abroad.  Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) proposed the provision, which would make such photos exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. 

The ACLU filed a FOI request for 2,000 photos of alleged abuse with the Department of Defense in 2003.  In 2005, a U.S. District Court judge in New York ordered the photos released, a decision that was upheld in 2008 by an appellate court.   The Obama administration has refused to comply with the order and asked the Supreme Court to hear the case.   

Click here for more information.  

Is Obama's Open Government Initiative Technologically Feasible?

Obama's open government directive will include a schedule for data distribution in formats that are machine-readable, says the Federal Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra.

But some e-government interest groups say that's unrealistic because most agency data exists in PDF format, which is not machine-readable and from which data cannot be easily extracted.

That makes the transfer of legacy data difficult, but one e-government advocate says newly created data could be stored in a new PDF/A version that is more suitable for long-term preservation.

For more information, click here.