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Obama Administration Withholds FoIA Requests More Often Than Bush's
bonch writes "Agencies under the Obama administration cite security provisions to withhold information more often than they did under the Bush administration. For example, the 'deliberative process' exemption of the Freedom of Information Act was used 70,779 times in 2009, up from the 47,395 of 2008. Amusingly, the Associated Press has been waiting three months for the government to deliver records on its own Open Government Directive."
The headline is misleading, despite the source. The source was willing to go as far as saying that this figure is in spite of Obama's own directive to stop using these loopholes for the FOIA. So whether it is lack of proper pressure, simple insubordination, or a deluge of requests (these figures should appropriately be compared to the overall requests, right?) the bottom line is that the President directed it to not happen and it is happening anyway.
If I had been logged in, I would have been treated like a breitbart.com was treated in this case, and the precise content of what I had said would always be drowned out by a chorus of argumentation. If you have unpopular views, being AC is the only way to have people consider whether those views are actually accurate or not, which is all I want.
So total requests went down and the number of denials went up.
Not necessarily. The number of "cited exemptions" is not the number of denials, it is closer to the number of reasons for denial. Like a lawyer, these agencies will frequently cite more than one reason to avoid release. It may even be that given Obama's directive to be more open to FOIA requests that the agencies are just covering their asses and citing a lot more exemptions when they do deny a request. For example, if the average number of exemptions went from 1 to 2 per denial, that would mean an actual decrease of about one third in actual denials since 2008.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
It seems only 1 exemption is required to reject a request. Is it possible that the Bush administration didn't bother with enumerating all the exemptions, whereas the Obama administration is more thorough? Just a thought.
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Except the only people with enough time on their hands (artists, welfare, ACORN workers, etc) to make tens of thousands of requests tend to be Obama supporters...
Were the inquiries both of a similar nature during both of the time periods in question? Or were there more rejected requests because the requests were asking for more sensitive info? Like most things that originate on Breibart/Drudge, too much information is missing....
They denied FOIA requests in their entirety based on exemptions 20,005 times last fiscal year, compared with 21,057 times the previous year.
Notice the conclusions are the complete opposite? Welcome to reporting by the AP. They are biased, but they are biased in both directions -- and they do it by spamming out stories to stir up controversy. Don't get me wrong, it's not all bad. But even the usually well respected AP has an angle, and it's important to remember that. So I ask again, is it any wonder why Brietbart picked the article it did?
meep
As far as I'm concerned, the only "value" in this report is as political bait. There's not enough information to form a reasoned response, so it can only be used to initiate emotional responses, which are what sell. (By the way, more than one exemption can be listed per denial).
As an example of how these numbers may be worthless and misrepresent the reality (although it's certainly possible that the situation is worse now than before as well):
Year 1: 500,000 requests, Year 2: 400,000; a 20% decline
Year 1: 400,000 exemptions, Year 2: 500,000; a 25% increase
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So far it looks bad, right? Significant decrease in requests and a significant increase of exemptions? Must mean that few requests are being honored, right? If we add a critical, but missing, piece of data: average number of exemptions per denial. Year 1: avg 1.5 per denial, Year 2: avg 2.5 per denial.
That gives us 266,666 denials in Year 1, and only 200,000 in Year 2. Not only is this an absolute reduction, but also a reduction relative to the total requests (53% in Year 1, 50% in Year 2).
As I said, since we don't have all the facts, it's also possible that "Obama's record" is worse than Bush's. Even if we had enough data to get to that comparison, it's still not worth all that much. If Bush had twice the number of denials but 90% of the requests were for ridiculous things that would never be granted (like troop positions or something), then it would be easy to say he has a better record despite Obama's lower totals.
In short, too many factors, too few of them presented.
Have you considered that might be because we have the wealth inequality of a banana republic?
If we were to restore 1950s and 1960s top-end tax rates rates, which were upwards of 90% on the very wealthiest, you'd find that we would not only have enough money to pay for the education and infrastructure, but that we'd be able to pay down the national debt as well.
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I just wanted to add my two cents... A month or so ago, I filed my first FOIA request. I requested some non-sensitive statistical data from an office associated with the Dept of Defense. Despite the banality of the data I was requesting, because it was related to the military and the shear volume of it (over 10M records), I was expecting some foot dragging. However, I was very pleasantly surprised. The very next day, the FOIA officer emailed me and then followed up with a phone call. She kept me apprised of the status of my request and about three weeks later, the data was FTPed to me. She even found someone to answer some questions I had about the formatting of the files.
I was fully expecting a more adversarial process considering the reputations of FOIA requests. But I learned that FOIA officers seem to care a great deal about facilitating requests. Just wanted to give kudos here where some is due.
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This makes no sense: it uses the frequency of use of the (non-security) "deliberative process" exemption as a supposed example of the Obama administration using "security provisions" more frequently than Bush's did. It clearly isn't an example of that, since the deliberative process exemption isn't a security provision.
It's like saying "John Doe owns more pickup trucks than Bob Smith. For instance, John Doe owns 36 Toyota Corollas, while Bob Smith only owns 24."
Last week I decided to give the "hide comment scores" option a try, and I have to say I really like. You spend more time actually reading what people say, rather than blazing over the comments that weren't modded up.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law