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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."
Breitbart.com? Really? Has Slashdot become Free Republic?
That's change I can believe in.
I'd like to be surprised - but it seems like all the presidents are mostly interchangeable these days.
Is this really surprising?
The AP's review of annual Freedom of Information Act reports filed by 17 major agencies found that the administration's use of nearly every one of the law's nine exemptions to withhold information from the public increased during fiscal year 2009, which ended last October.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
1) This is an AP story, Breitbart didn't write it.
2) If you don't think 2,000 pages that nobody has read which rebuilds 17% of the US economy according to the whims of a couple hundred Democrats doesn't represent an oppressive regime, then I don't know what to tell you.
I know you are trolling but one of Pres. Obama's big campaign points was that he was going to "change" Washington. He was going to run this wide open and "transparent" government. So far he has been anything but transparent. It's disappointing, I had some hopes about Pres. Obama (and I did not vote for him).
It's amazing how much hoopla goes into picking and voting for a particular party, when government is so much bigger than just one man (or woman). It makes you wonder if anything will ever, or can ever, change.
The agencies cited exemptions at least 466,872 times in budget year 2009, compared with 312,683 times the previous year, the review found. Over the same period, the number of information requests declined by about 11 percent, from 493,610 requests in fiscal 2008 to 444,924 in 2009.
Seriously, there is no need to speculate when the information was right there in front of you eyes.
The agencies cited exemptions at least 466,872 times in budget year 2009, compared with 312,683 times the previous year, the review found. Over the same period, the number of information requests declined by about 11 percent, from 493,610 requests in fiscal 2008 to 444,924 in 2009.
So total requests went down and the number of denials went up.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
... and he doesn't need to answer to the ignorant masses or explain himself to them.
The original article does have some additional data, for example, in addition to the "deliverative process" exemption going up to 70,779 from 47,395, total exemptions also went up, to 466,872 from 312,683. Most damning, though, seems to be that total requests went DOWN, from 493,610 to 444,924, which means that they cited more exemptions than they actually received information requests (I wonder if that's ever happened before).
If the media really cared about open government and barring corruption, they would be publishing daily headlines about denials to FOIA requests, how long they have been waiting, and what the alleged reason is. If the press did their job and informed the people rather than preach propaganda, people could be better armed with information to put pressure on elected officials and force them to move on come election day if the officials don't mend their ways.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
The first reaction, especially given the headline is, Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
But, as pointed out in the article: "Obama's directive, memorialized in written instructions from the Justice Department, appears to have been widely ignored."
Then we look into the details. The fiscal year that this article is covering started in October 2008 and ended in October 2009. So for the first quarter of the time period covered by this article, we weren't even in the Obama Administration.
Also, if we assume that the decision to exempt information from FOIA requests is made by senior officers in the respective agencies, and we know that Bush had 8 years to appoint people who shared his views, and that the Senate Republicans have been doing an impressive job of blocking and delaying Obama's appointments, let alone the "cleaning" that occurs once the new bosses are in place.
Should it come as a surprise to anyone that this last year was no better, and perhaps even worse than the previous year? Absolutely not. I would expect that this coming year should show improvement, provided the white house is willing to back up Obama's directive now that they have had time to get more of their appointments into positions of authority.
That said, I sure hope this article makes it to the President's desk and that he thinks long and hard about it.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Have you seen what he's up against? The Democrats were never as obstructive to President Bush.
The problem is that Obama's main idea of change - bipartisanship - is the least productive way of making change
in America.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
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.
Bullshit. Bipartisanship works both ways... The Democrats are asking the Republicans to "work with us", yet the Democrats are refusing to do the same! If you disagree, please explain the purpose of the closed door meetings between Dems and the Pres on healthcare. In what way can a closed meeting promote "working together" when half of the decision makers are not even invited...
What he's up against? He made his bed (By touting "change" and "openness"), and now he needs to lie in it... The truth has come out in the past year. He's a politician... Plain and simple. Sure, his campaign made it look like he was something different, but the reality of the matter is in the end of the day, they are all politicians...
Watch a little Rachel Maddow, read a little of the HuffPo, you'll be surprised just how many times liberal sources DO report on stuff like this. The liberal blogosphere is kinda pissed that Obama isn't the far-left bleeding-hear socialist that conservatives make him out to be, and they call him out on it quite a bit.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Do you realize that line means the numbers quoted are not comparable. If more than one "exemption" can be cited per request, then the number of exemptions, which they are quoting, does not actually tell you how many FOIA requests were withheld. It could easily be that the Obama administration is being more clear about what is being withheld and why for any given request, and that leads to a larger "exemptions" count. The problem is, without more info the numbers obviously do not mean what they are being represented to mean.
(From the EPA report, though all agencies use the same criteria)
a. Exemption 1: Classified national defense and foreign relations information
b. Exemption 2: Internal agency rules and practices
c. Exemption 3: Information that is prohibited from disclosure by another federal law
d. Exemption 4: Trade secrets and other confidential business information
e. Exemption 5: Inter-agency or intra-agency communications that are protected by legal privileges
f. Exemption 6: Information involving matters of personal privacy
g. Exemption 7: Records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes, to the extent that the production of those records (A) could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings, (B) would deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication, (C) could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, (D) could reasonably be expected to disclose the identity of a confidential source, (E) would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions, or would disclose guidelines for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions, or (F) could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual
h. Exemption 8: Information relating to the supervision of financial institutions
i. Exemption 9: Geological information on wells
Some of those exemptions provide for a certain amount of creativity on the part of the denier.
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...
What goes unmentioned:
97% of the millions of denied FoIA requests that make up this statistic were requests for Obama's birth certificate.
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....
Every time I read a story about how Obama is continuing a Bush administration policy, or extending and exceding it, I post it to http://obamaisthenewbush.tumblr.com/
Having kept this up, on and off, for the last 6 months some patterns definitely appear. The Justice Department is seriously entrenched in covering its ass, cracking down hard on individual freedoms and privacy, and almost always falling on the side of big business.
I'm not disappointed because I believed all the pablum about "Change" and "Hope," but because Obama was a frickin' law professor. He should know better!
Well, there are 50 requests a month for his birth certificate from the State of Hawaii. That's private information that shouldn't be released to every Tom, Dick, Harry that asks for it. I wonder what else people ask for from the government that aren't legitimately acceptible requests.
http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20100219/NEWS01/2190362/Hawaii-gets-persistent-requests-for-Obama-birth-certificate
I don't trust him for the simple fact that he's a politician.
Technoli
Go get more informative numbers from here. In 2008 56% of requests were granted. In 2009 61% of requests were granted. 2009 also worked to clear up the request backlog. It is a move in the right direction and as others have pointed out Bush was still in charge for part of FY 2009, so he might have skewed the numbers for the year.
No that's Bullshit. Democrats have presented a bill that's far to the right of a bill that Republicans would have even proposed, and Republicans are refusing to be a part of it at all. If there was not bi-partisanship than they would have rammed this through Congress and I'd be sitting pretty with socialized medicine right now. The problem is there have been far too many overtures to bi-partisanship.
Republicans don't want bi-partisanship. They want Obama to fail.
Closed door meetings? Stop bringing up bullshit Limbaugh talking points. There are always closed door meetings on capital hill. Are Republicans having public meetings on crafting there competing health care bill? That's a bullshit point.
See, even Yoda is disappointed by Obama
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
1) Sort of a fair point. What I'm saying is though, Breitbart and Drudge will run things from any source, with no confirmation and are slanted in their selection. But yeah, I respect AP, so I'll give that to you. 2) If its rebuilding it in a way I like. And yeah, I haven't read it all, but I've gotten some good synopses from sources I trust. If you're going to make an extraordinary claim like "The Dems are as oppressive as the last Republican administration," you're going to need a lot of evidence. We're talking about a party who's core value is conformity. And who presided over a mood of the time of pervasive bullying, anti-intellectualism, and fear mongering. This whole "they're all the same line," got tired after Bush beat Gore in 2000. Because Bush and Gore were the same. Yeah right. What a load.
Drudge and Breitbart are Fox News on the Web.
What do you expect to happen in 5 years when people catch on? Those will become the top two sites on the Web, like Fox News is on cable?
You seem to hate them because they actually hire people who aren't liberals. Apparently "non-biased" means "100% liberal".
2) If you don't think 2,000 pages that nobody has read which rebuilds 17% of the US economy according to the whims of a couple hundred Democrats doesn't represent an oppressive regime, then I don't know what to tell yo
As opposed to not doing something because a couple of hundred Republicans oppose it? Every time Republicans mention that the majority of Americans oppose the Health bill, I want to ask them if they ever polled anybody other than their constituents. Because, you know, those of us who actually like the bill think we ought to be counted as Americans as well.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Bipartisan ship means that the right-wing folks need to accept some of the left wing folks' ideas.
Bull. That's not bipartisanship. That's horse trading.
Bipartisanship would be the Dems not liking the way insurance companies ride roughshod over subscribers, and the Reps not liking the idea of the government taking over 1/6th of the economy, so they reach an agreement that answers both concerns. A law that would require insurance policies to match one of a few DHHS outline policies, or state clearly how they differ.
Dems are concerned about the huge cost of the tax liability and portability between jobs, and Reps are concerned about the lack of accountability. A viable compromise would be that all policies are taxed like normal income, raising necessary funds and removing the chain between insurance and a job.
In no way is bipartisanship a "you get one, I get one" game. That leads to the ridiculous robbing of the public purse and our grandchildren's inheritance that we see now.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Why do you hate atheists, pudge?
Why are you lying about me?
p>2) If you don't think 2,000 pages that nobody has read which rebuilds 17% of the US economy according to the whims of a couple hundred Democrats doesn't represent an oppressive regime, then I don't know what to tell you.
So a government is an "oppressive regime" any time it passes a long bill on an important topic that an unpopular political party doesn't like?
I've done some work with federal agencies and how they process FOIA requests:
A request for information under the FOIA can be granted, partially denied, or denied. If the request is granted, the exact records requested are returned unedited. If the request is denied, one or more reasons (exceptions) must be stated from a list of allowed exemptions. If a request is partially denied, one or more exemptions must be stated and what the requester receives back will either be a subset of what was asked for or will be redacted to remove sensitive information. For example, PIA (personally identifiable information - like SSNs, birth dates, medical records, etc.) is an exemption and is grounds for a partial denial, but it usually only means that this information will be redacted from the requested records.
So if you are looking at statistics (annual FOIA reports are required by law from every government entity and the reports themselves are either published or available via FOIA request themselves), you need to know the total number of new requests, the total number of requests held over from the previous fiscal year, the number of requests granted, the number partially denied, and the number totally denied. There are also individual statistics for denials and partial denials broken down by exemptions. There isn't anything on the annual report about how many exemptions were applied to individual requests - that would just have to be averaged out.
The Obama administration did encourage more release of records under the FOIA and a relaxing of exemptions. The idea was to assume that any record could be released unless an exemption prevented it. The previous directive was to presume that any record could not released and then try to justify it. If they couldn't justify denying it, they would grudgingly release it. The other thing that has been encouraged is pre-emptive release. For any request that is granted (no exemptions) there is no reason to not put that record on the agency's public web site to avoid processing any future requests for it. Or if there are certain types of records that can be released and that get requested often, go ahead and publish them. Theoretically this will reduce the number of FOIA requests processed, but I think it's probably too early to see a difference based on this policy.
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness
Not sure why your post was marked troll, even if it's a little paranoid. It's quite likely that teabaggers and other anti-obama people have affected these nnumbers, even if unintentionally.
So this is all just a giant conspiracy? A vast, right-wing secret attack on Obama? A backhand way to make him look bad? "Hey boys, lets fill out another hundred or so of those FOIA requests today! We're almost at our goal".
Wow. There's paranoia, and then there's you guys.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
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."
I see you didn't bother to read my post before replying... you know, the part of my post that actually explains what I think may be a contributing factor, that has *nothing* to do with any kind of conspiracy.
Although, FWIW, there *are* groups that coordinate to send FOIA requests on topics. I don't think the purpose is to discredit Obama via bad FOIA numbers -- but the purpose is generally to discredit *someone* via the information gathered.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I don't have to read it. A government takeover of healthcare is wrong on its face.
And one of the main reasons is that it requires laws thousands of pages long that nobody can possibly understand.
As opposed to all of the other bills that go through Congress every year? Every interest group (commercial, union, or private) has a huge number of lobbyists and legislative specialists who pore over every bill that goes through congress.
Believe me, they have read this bill.
And government isn't "taking over" healthcare. They are not privatizing the health care market, they are setting up conditions to allow a real market in individual / small business insurance to exist.
Mitt Romney did something similar with MassachusettsCare, and the Republicans proposed something similar in opposition to the Clinton plan back in 1994.
Many in the Republican party act as if any Democratic initiative is the end of the republic and must be blocked, even if they do worse themselves when in power.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
When I judge a site for bias, I like to look at the comments sections.
Then Slashdot should never again link to the New York Times.
Are you really claiming that the NYT is as biased as Breitbart? Odd.
Well, *I* would never in a million claim that the NYT is as biased as Breitbart.
The NYT exceeds the level of bias at Breitbart by orders of magnitude.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.