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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."
The courts had ordered the Pentagon to release additional prison torture pics and vids, stuff Congress had viewed in private and turned a lot of stomachs. Currently the Pentagon is illegally sitting on these pics. Can we get all the ugly in the open so we can start to earn our respect back?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Now we can get the information about the Roswell / Area 51 connection!
Transparency of government is not a technology issue, it's an administrative issue.
Technology is just what is used to distribute information.
so +1 for "Administration policies"
also he gets +1 for taking the neutrality captain on board, that is a technology point
Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
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.
Is this on the same website yesterday that said "President Obama has not issued any executive orders" when in fact he had already done several?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
One idea to make their websites more transparent would be to use 32-bit PNGs.
Now maybe I'll file a FOIA request with the BATFE to reveal the NFA registry contents (with personal names & addresses redacted, of course) to demonstrate errors and abuses, especially involving 922(o). Don't see how, under this EO, they could say "no". Results could be VERY interesting...
(If you don't grok that, Google is your friend.)
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
I'm going to disagree with Obama more than I will agree with him but one should give credit where it is due... Open information is *critical* to nurture an informed populace and an informed populace is needed to care for a representative government.
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
I found this very interesting:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/robots.txt
The WhiteHouse.gov website's robots.txt file has been trimmed to:
User-agent: * /includes/
Disallow:
Under previous administrations it was pages long. I suppose this may bode well for openness.
-CR
"So is the BSD licence even more 'free' (than GPLv2)? Yes. Unquestionably." --Linus Torvalds (TinyURL.com/2vugzl)
While this is not entirely related to freedom of information, it is related to transparency, shining light on government corruption and rapid changes storming the executive.
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=42299
This article reports what I heard over NPR on the drive home yesterday. The revolving door that has been a peeve to me and many others is being addressed in Obama's actions. A lot of people who set their lives up using te good ole boy system of mutual mack scratching will be very upset by this... and I hope they are! It is time these despicable practices come to an end.
Hmmm, I don't know - being allowed to just "know" what the government is doing seems a little fishy. How are they supposed to keep us terrified and docile if they can't pretend that they always, just barely, have the boogeyman on the point of a knife -- but it's too dangerous to let us see him? And if we are not terrified and docile, how can they maintain their lack of accountability? The lack of accountability that is the very hallmark of the modern United States political system.
Honestly - the ideas this guy comes up with...
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
This executive order is basically the same one that was created post-Watergate to try and ensure Presidential records were published and archived for posterity. Bush revoked it in a widely criticised move, Obamas EO revokes the revocation and is otherwise identically worded, except that it also now covers the Vice President, which can only be an improvement. So basically on day 1 of his new Presidency Obama is already undoing some of the damage Bush caused :)
Let's play Situation Replacement, shall we?
----
Location: Germany
When: December 1945
>> Can we get all the ugly from the Holocaust in the open so we can start to earn our respect back?
Help the victims. Heal them physically and mentally. Pay them. Acknowledge wrongdoing. Admit guilt. State the facts. Do this all extremely publicly.
But burn those goddamn pictures. All they will do is piss people off, no matter how hard you try to make things right.
----
Sometimes the ugly needs to be seen.
My hand to God. Baby geese. Goslings. They were juggled.
This is different from Bush's Executive Order 13233 which states:
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.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Good point, and not only that, but if the ugly isn't out in the open, eventually people will forget.
If we didn't have all those awful photos and films of holocaust victims and emaciated survivors, in 20 years once all the people are dead who lived through that time period revisionist historians could argue that the holocaust really wasn't all that bad, and people would believe them.
First-hand sources -- diaries, pictures, films, videos -- keep us all honest.
The guy hasn't even been president for a week. Most presidents are given 100 days before people start complaining that they are not doing enough. Seriously, you can't expect him to get anything done, the half day that he was inaugurated, and the it is safe to assume that his first full day is spent figuring out where a punch of stuff was put. I'm actually pleasantly surprised that we have something so soon. I particularly pleased that it is something good instead of something seriously bad.
Eisenhower had it right when after liberating a concentration camp he told the troops to pick up every scrap of film, every picture because someday some idiots would claim that it never happened.
People should have their noses rubbed in it. Faces can be obscured to protect the participants but the American public needs to know what these people it elected did.
My poetry site welcomes the unusual.
Soldiers, at least non-officers, are trained through very intense programs to always obey orders without question. They are not taught to get in arguments over their orders. What's more, they can face charges for refusing an order.
The military isn't a big committee. It isn't something where you sit down and discuss what is going to be done until everyone is happy with it. It is a very rigid organization where you are told what to do by those above you and you do it. This is especially true at the enlisted "grunt" level. You are taught to do what your commander tells you, not ask why, and you are told that failure to do so may have serious consequences.
I get real tired of people who are willing to tell others in tough situations how they "should" act. Think it's that easy? Try it then. Enlist, go through basic, see the kind of mental and physical conditioning soldiers are subjected to. See what the culture and rules are like. Then see if you think it's so easy to just say "Nope, don't like that order, not going to do it."
Now please understand, I'm not saying you can't criticize the military's actions or that the people in charge shouldn't be held accountable. I'm saying that the people who were simply obeying orders can't. All logic aside, there's international law on the issue too. You can prosecute a low level soldier who was just doing what they were told to do.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2001/11/eo-pra.html
EXECUTIVE ORDER 13233
FURTHER IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PRESIDENTIAL RECORDS ACT
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to establish policies and procedures implementing section 2204 of title 44 of the United States Code with respect to constitutionally based privileges, including those that apply to Presidential records reflecting military, diplomatic, or national security secrets, Presidential communications, legal advice, legal work, or the deliberative processes of the President and the President's advisors, and to do so in a manner consistent with the Supreme Court's decisions in Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, 433 U.S. 425 (1977), and other cases, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Definitions.
For purposes of this order:
(a) "Archivist" refers to the Archivist of the United States or his designee.
(b) "Presidential records" refers to those documentary materials maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration pursuant to the Presidential Records Act, 44 U.S.C. 2201-2207.
(c) "Former President" refers to the former President during whose term or terms of office particular Presidential records were created.
Sec. 2. Constitutional and Legal Background.
(a) For a period not to exceed 12 years after the conclusion of a Presidency, the Archivist administers records in accordance with the limitations on access imposed by section 2204 of title 44. After expiration of that period, section 2204(c) of title 44 directs that the Archivist administer Presidential records in accordance with section 552 of title 5, the Freedom of Information Act, including by withholding, as appropriate, records subject to exemptions (b)(1), (b)(2), (b)(3), (b)(4), (b)(6), (b)(7), (b)(8), and (b)(9) of section 552. Section 2204(c)(1) of title 44 provides that exemption (b)(5) of section 552 is not available to the Archivist as a basis for withholding records, but section 2204(c)(2) recognizes that the former President or the incumbent President may assert any constitutionally based privileges, including those ordinarily encompassed within exemption (b)(5) of section 552. The President's constitutionally based privileges subsume privileges for records that reflect: military, diplomatic, or national security secrets (the state secrets privilege); communications of the President or his advisors (the presidential communications privilege); legal advice or legal work (the attorney-client or attorney work product privileges); and the deliberative processes of the President or his advisors (the deliberative process privilege).
(b) In Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, the Supreme Court set forth the constitutional basis for the President's privileges for confidential communications: "Unless [the President] can give his advisers some assurance of confidentiality, a President could not expect to receive the full and frank submissions of facts and opinions upon which effective discharge of his duties depends." 433 U.S. at 448-49. The Court cited the precedent of the Constitutional Convention, the records of which were "sealed for more than 30 years after the Convention." Id. at 447 n.11. Based on those precedents and principles, the Court ruled that constitutionally based privileges available to a President "survive[] the individual President's tenure." Id. at 449. The Court also held that a former President, although no longer a Government official, may assert constitutionally based privileges with respect to his Administration's Presidential records, and expressly rejected the argument that "only an incumbent President can assert the privilege of the Presidency." Id. at 448.
(c) The Supreme Court has held that a party seeking to overcome the constitutionally based privileges that apply to Presidential records must establish at least a "demonstrated, speci
Does anyone else think his executive order freezing the pay of those White House workers making more than $100,000/year is a frightening preview ...
No.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
The Obama administration will more easily (and rightly) be able to say "Don't blame us, the problem already existed when we arrived...see for yourself." Hopefully, lots of the closeted skeletons will see the light of day.
If your only tool is a hammer, every problem becomes a nail.
We were told we had to obey all lawful orders. We were instructed that we were duty bound to disobey any order which violated the UCMJ. IOW, we didn't have to obey an order to torture someone, because it was against the Army's policy at the time.
Well, that was before the Bush White House.
The way I always thought of it was simply, "Could an officer make a case against me for refusing to obey this order?" In almost every case of torture or improper treatment, the answer would be no. In almost any other case, the answer would be yes. I'm not aware of any officer who would even attempt to justify an order to torture or kill prisoners to his superior. In fact, it just so happens that in the Marines, the case of Lt Col Chessani shows just the opposite. Some of his Marines ended up killing civilians in Haditha, and he's now on trial for it. Had any of his subordinates admitted to ordering the killing of civilians, he most certainly would have had them court-martialled for doing so.
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