Obama Edicts Boost FOIA and .gov Websites

Ian Lamont writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the National Security Archive are praising President Obama's executive orders to make the federal government more open. Yesterday, Obama issued two memos and one executive order instructing government agencies to err on the side of making information public and not to look for reasons to legally withhold it. The moves are expected to make it easier for people to file Freedom of Information Act requests, and should also boost the amount of information that agencies place on their websites. The general counsel for the National Security Archive (an NGO that publishes declassified documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act) even predicts that agencies will use blogs to share information. Obama's directives reverse a 2001 memo from former US Attorney General John Ashcroft instructing federal agencies to generally withhold information from citizens filing FOIA requests."

Comments

links to the memos and order

[jamie]

I don't think the linked article provides links directly to the memos, but propublica did, so here they are:

Memo on Transparency and Open Government

Memo on the Freedom of Information Act

And here's the Executive Order on Presidential Records, which makes clear that claims of secrecy by the former president and his subordinates will be evaluated, and accepted or rejected, by the current president.

Re:I am not a lawyer, but...

[UnknowingFool]

It makes perfect sense to me. Basic guildelines:The Archivist of the Presidential records is in charge of maintaining the records. Obama's Executive Order:

• Archivist will notify the current or former Presidents the intent to disclose records.
• That President will have 30 days to object or claim executive privilege.
• If executive privilege is invoked, the Archivist will not release said records until a determination by the Attorney General, Counsel to the current President, etc to determine if executive privilege applies.
• If determined not privileged, the records will be released.

This is different from Bush's Executive Order 13233 which states:

• The Archivist must wait 12 years after the President has left office before any records are released.
• The Archivist must wait 90 days between notifying a President or former President of intent to release and the actual release.
• The records of a former President can only be released if the former Presidents concurs with the current President that they can be released.

In Bush's Order, a former President can keep his records from being disclosed indefinitely simply by objecting to the release. No claim of privilege is required and no provision is made to override the objection. Under Obama, only executive privilege can keep records from being release and even then that claimed is reviewed. IANAL but that's how I interpreted it. Any lawyers care to comment.

Re:Obama's Staff Trims robots.txt

[uhmmmm]

This has been debunked on reddit and probably other places.

1) Bush's robots.txt began very similarly to Obama's, it grew later. Obama's robots.txt file starting small proves nothing. Look again in a year and see what it looks like then.
2) The pages disallowed by Bush's robots.txt file were (almost?) all printer-friendly versions of pages which were not excluded. The information was still there and accessible to spiders.

I'm no Bush fan, but let's limit the bashing to things that are actually true and meaningful, shall we?

Re:That shows amazing ignorance of the military

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was in the Marine Corps, assigned to a raid unit, we were informed that during a wartime assignment, any failure to obey a direct order is a crime whose maximum penalty is summary execution.

Essentially, if you disobey the lieutenant or a sergeant, the guy can technically shoot you dead and give the order to someone else.

It's a motivator...