Congress must fight for FOIA in 2015
espite the laughable claim that his is “the most transparent administration in history,” President Barack Obama continues to preside over some of the most hostile opposition to government transparency in modern U.S. history. His administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined, and it has fiercely fought attempts to shed light on troubling government activities — from the FBI’s use of national security letters, which force companies to produce customer data under gag orders, to the deployment of cellphone surveillance equipment in cities across the country. This obscurity is not unique to any one agency: From local police departments to the highest levels of government, a culture of secrecy has taken root in which the centers of power use increasingly extraordinary measures to prevent the public from finding out what they are doing.
The eleventh-hour killing of a modest transparency bill last month under pressure from the Obama administration further underscores the staying power of this opaque landscape. The bill would have simply codified a set of existing guidelines for Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests made by citizens to compel the disclosure of government records, making it harder for authorities to withhold documents or charge requesters exorbitant fees.
But the bill was unceremoniously held, despite nearly unanimous support in both houses of Congress, ensuring that transparency will remain elusive to many requesters in 2015 — and suggesting that some answers may be revealed only through leaks, hacks and other less-than-legal means.
A flawed law
The death of the FOIA Improvement Act is particularly infuriating to anyone familiar with the FOIA process. In theory, public records laws such as FOIA are supposed to favor disclosure and provide for the timely release of documents from police and government agencies. But in practice, success often requires a sophisticated understanding of the system and relevant laws. According to Muckrock, a popular website that streamlines and tracks FOIA requests, less than a quarter of the more than 12,000 requests it has tracked since 2010 have resulted in the release of government records.
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/1/foia-congress-leaks.html
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