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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."
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.
And which progressive and left-oriented site WOULD write about this, on the condition that it was true?
Because you DO realise that the only difference between your system of fairness and totalitarian-fascism is the premise that leftwing sites would write about everything that was true and relevant, so that you can legitimately reject everything on other sites as biased?
It's an Associated Press story. Here's the same story hosted on Google if it makes you feel better, oh and Yahoo, too, and Salon, oh and the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Airplane Photos, Airline News, Planespotting Guides
Meaningless, it's an AP story. Would you feel better reading it on The Stamford Advocate? Or the San Jose Mercury News?
I'd also like to point out that a knee-jerk accusation of bias sounds and awful lot like . . . bias.
-Peter
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.
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.
Totally agreed. That it is from breitbart is utterly irrelevant. And the raw number is not too interesting unless you know the number of requests, and probably the specific agencies (and topics) the requests were for. Though while, yes, more years will reveal better data, there's nothing wrong with looking at it in-progress.
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).
And which progressive and left-oriented site WOULD write about this, on the condition that it was true?
An honest one.
FTA: Google edition:
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. Agencies often cite more than one exemption when withholding part or all of the material sought in an open-records request.
So, the number of requests declined 11% and the number of exemptions was much higher.
Awesome.
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 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
For whatever it's worth HuffPo posted the AP article.
meep
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...
hehe, he asks which progressive and left-oriented site would write about it, you answer an honest one, but don't provide any....does that mean there are no honest left-oriented sites?
That's the whole point. It makes the numbers meaningless, and therefore makes the conclusion invalid. The important statistic would be "percentage of FOIA requests denied". I'm guessing that THAT statistic didn't *jive* well with the author's pre-conceived conclusions, and so was conveniently ommited.
AccountKiller
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.
(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.
What goes unmentioned:
97% of the millions of denied FoIA requests that make up this statistic were requests for Obama's birth certificate.
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!
Bullshit.
False.
You're giving attention and ad revenue to a political operative.
Bullshit.
Wow! What cogent reasoning. Let me add my counterpoint:
Your mother wears combat boots.
Haha! Now that I have totally demolished your argument, what will you do?
Seriously, though, how is linking to Breitbart and not the AP story NOT giving money and attention to Breitbart?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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.
In the Bush days? You're wrong - even now, Bush is still responsible for everything happening. Unless it's good. Depending on who you ask, of course.
(Yes, this is an exaggerated statement, but I am trying to make a point.)
They denied FOIA requests in their entirety based on exemptions 20,005 times last fiscal year, compared with 21,057 times the previous year.
Oops. So much for the damming evidence. Clearly though, I think we can all agree that we should all be pushing for less denials and more transparent government. If we sit around stirring the shitpot about who's guy is better, then we're doing ourselves no good at all. Well, except for generating a little ad revenue for slashdot and brietbart.
meep
No he's right to a degree. I've been modded down countless times for expressing or at least addressing unpopular views. As an AC the more vindictive mods will just ignore you as not being worth the points. Slashdot is not terribly tolerant of diverse viewpoints, even if they are well argued and not just idle trolling. AC is often the way to go if you have something to say that's intelligent but contrary.
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
Either your salary or your oxycodone prescription must be huge if you think it's not a problem to give legitimacy to right-wing propaganda outlets.
Defining media outlets you simply dislike as "propaganda outlets" is not convincing to anyone, other than people who are as closed-minded and hypocritical as you are.
Ok, so less than 5% reduced denials on 11% less requests...Sounds like statistically likely evidence that denials are more likely.
The fact that other papers reprint AP stories verbatim doesn't make the AP an unbiased source.
They've been caught several times in the past writing items at least as biased as anything on Fox News.
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
I may not be rich enough to benefit from the Republicans' policies, but I'm also definitely not rich enough to pay for the Democrats'.
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
That's easy enough to avoid. Just prefix your post with "I know I'll get modded down for this, but..."
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Sorry, have to disagree there. I say fairly controversial (read: anything remotely approaching a conservative viewpoint) things all the time but I make sure to do it either eloquently enough or humorously enough that I've been modded down so little I can count the negative point comments on one hand.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
Perhaps it's because conservatives viewpoints are less controversial on slashdot than you'd think at first glance?
I have a fairly liberal viewpoint, it's not even extreme. And yet I get modded Troll quite often for writing comments that are by no means trollish.
I think it's the liberal viewpoints that get hammered here on slashdot... really it's the extremes of both sides. But thinking on the topic over the past couple years has led me to one conclusion on the topic... people with axes to grind will spend their modpoints grinding that axe, many of them without consideration for the actual content of the post.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
http://www.dailyshow.com/
Honestly, I think we trend towards libertarianism more than anything else around here. The underlying reasoning being something along the lines of: politicians are almost exclusively corrupt morons and I don't want them telling me what to do on any topic.
Means that neither intrusive conservatism nor intrusive liberalism are well received, by in large. Holding a controversial view goes over well enough but espousing the need to push it onto others, not so much.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
That's deceptive. You quoted one part of the article, which taken out of context makes it sound as if they refused less FOIA requests this year than last. That's untrue -- they refused less FOIA requests *in their entirety* this year than last, by a small amount. There's also about 10% less FOIA reqeusts this year than last (yet the ones refused in their entirety only fell ~5%). That article makes no mention of the total number of bits of information withheld. The one at breit does -- [quote]The agencies cited exemptions at least 466,872 times in budget year 2009, compared with 312,683 times the previous year ...[/quote].
The conclusions are not the complete opposite, and even the 'administration-friendly' article you linked doesn't at any point insinuate that Obama's administration is any more open and transparent than Bush's.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.