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."

Comments

Re:Biased much?

[jeffmeden]

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.

Re:Biased much?

[beakerMeep]

I'll probably get modded down for this but it bothers me that you guys dont seem to understand the term "devil's advocate." The purpose was not to compare Brietbart to Stormfront, but to take something way more extreme to use as a contrast. To put into relief that bias matters. And it's clear that it does. The AP often publishes multiple articles so that any one side can pick and choose the one with the numbers that fits their conclusions. Don't believe me? Have a look at this other AP article.

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?

Re:Biased much?

[ooshna]

http://www.dailyshow.com/

Re:How this works

[XorNand]

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.