Utah Repeals Anti-Transparency Law

oddjob1244 writes "After enduring two weeks of public fury, Utah lawmakers voted Friday to repeal a bill that would have restricted public access to government records. While Senate President Michael Waddoups accused the media of lobbying on the issue and others blamed the press for biased coverage that turned citizens against them, Sen. Steve Urquhart said bluntly: 'We messed up. It is nobody's fault but ours.'"

Comments

No.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

You didn't "mess up", except in the very limited and weasely sense that you 'miscalculated the level of bullshit that you could get away with'.

I'm pretty sure that you didn't just trip on your way into the state senate and accidentally draft and pass a bill. That would be "messing up". You can't do something that complex just by accident.

While the attempt to simultaneously diminish your guilt and 'take responsibility' is rather cute, it is entirely false. Everyone who assisted in passing this bill didn't "mess up", they quite deliberately tried to get away with something. The only 'error' involved was miscalculating what they could get away with.

Re:No.

[EdIII]

While Senate President Michael Waddoups accused the media of lobbying on the issue and others blamed the press for biased coverage

Let's not forget that one either. That there are people that won't admit any part of it is wrong. That there exists a "unbiased" view of anti-transparency that would convince the average citizen that transparency is bad for our society.

These people are the exact type of people that have no business being in government.

If you can't understand that all information, ALL INFORMATION, that the government possesses, creates, or receives is the PROPERTY of The People... then you are completely unsuited to be a champion of the people, a guardian of our ideals, specifically those relating to freedom.

The only exceptions that I will accept as reasonable are a very narrow area regarding national security.

Trade negotiations are NOT national security, and the bus schedules are not owned by the government in a way that allows them to enjoy copyrights.

The biggest problem with this story is this Waddoups douchnozzle that does not understand any of this and, right at this moment, still thinks he is right.

The Senator is just a weasel as you said.

Re:No.

[istartedi]

The only exceptions that I will accept as reasonable are a very narrow area regarding national security

I agree, but I've never found a clear way to define that.

Obviously information regarding forces in a war should be classified. Is Libya a war? Ooops. Today's policitican can't even define war.

OK. You and I can define war. So let's say that we restrict classification to information regarding forces in a war. What about new weapons systems? OK. Troops in war, and weapons systems.

What's a weapons system? Your tank runs Linux. Linux is part of a weapons system. Linux is classified. Ooops.

Then, don't even get me started on homeland security.

It all boils down to judgement. Yep. No getting around it. We actually have to judge stuff. Trade negotiations. Plainly they should be public. Identities of CIA agents working in hostile countries. Plainly classified. It's like pornography. You know it when you see it.

Re:No.

[I(rispee_I(reme]

The national security loophole is bullshit. Here's why:

An informed electorate is vital to the continued existence of a democracy. A democracy that keeps information regarding its own activities from its electorate endangers itself. Thus, the national security loophole is itself a danger to national security.

There is no valid reason for a government to ever keep its activities secret from those it governs. The potential conflict of interest is too great- it is reminiscent of the logic puzzles wherein someone of unknown honesty is asked, "Are you a liar?"

Emotional appeals for national security based on the safety of those engaged in espionage are not relevant. The individuals in question, without exception, agreed to exchange their safety for their government's. And, as stated above, invoking national security endangers the invoking government.

Your paraphrasing Potter Stewart's opinion on pornography is apt- in that that opinion is famously subjective and useful only to those who wish to set themselves up as (or be ruled by) potentates.

As for myself, if I must be ruled, I would prefer the rule of law to the rule of man.

Re:No.

[jamesh]

There is no valid reason for a government to ever keep its activities secret from those it governs.

Interesting opinion. Back in the real world of shades other than black and white, there are situations where secrecy is required, at least in the short term. It's not much good making a sneak attack on Osama Bin Laden's secret bunker if you go and tell the people you govern that you are just about to do it, as you can be guaranteed that at least one of the people you govern is going to be working for the enemy. Likewise, if you were working undercover as one of Hitlers henchmen it would kind of suck if the fact was placed on the public record - your day would end very badly.

Emotional appeals for national security based on the safety of those engaged in espionage are not relevant. The individuals in question, without exception, agreed to exchange their safety for their government's.

... on the basis that their government would offer them suitable protection, including keeping their identity secret while they were under cover.

I think the trick here is to make sure that the fact is placed on public record as soon as secrecy is no longer required, so that the people keeping the secrets know that they will be held accountable, which is the whole point. If Osama's bunker turned out to actually be an orphanage then the decisions should be publicly investigated.

Re:No.

[bhtooefr]

A couple options I can think of...

1. Automatically give every American citizen a clearance, and if they're found by a court to have leaked info to non-citizens, they're guilty of treason.
2. Have classified information, but treat overclassification - that is, classifying information that would reveal wrongdoing or does not affect the US's military strategy if it were to leak - as treason, and give a reward to the leaker of that information.

Re:No.

[jamesh]

This is why checks and balances are supposed to be good. For when there are legitimate secrets, there should be oversight. The problem is, you're dealing with humans, and the oversight mechanisms have flaws.

Until the machines rise up and take over, humans are the best we have.

FOI request.

[FatLittleMonkey]

I've never really understood Freedom Of Information Act requests. If I'm allowed to request the information, then why isn't it just... available? Why the need for a request?

Re:FOI request.

[hedwards]

Because there's a huge mountain of materials that could be requested and much of it has to be reviewed before it's released. Some materials can be provided via a FOIA request but have to be redacted in order to be released.

Re:FOI request.

[fonos]

It would cost a lot of money to publish every single document that could be requested. Plus, certain documents contain sensitive/personal information, so they may omit certain parts of the document depending on who requests it. You can request the information US Customs has on you. Entries, exits, etc.

Re:FOI request.

[zippthorne]

It would cost a lot less if, instead of publishing the documents, they stored them in some kind of machine-readable form, and used automatons to fetch, copy, and deliver responses to requests made using a standardized set of machine instructions....

Re:FOI request.

[Teancum]

Even then, presuming that the documents were created and used electronically for their entire lifetime (still not a given even today), there sometimes is either "classified" references or perhaps personal and/or private information such as SSNs and other personally identifiable information that normally ought to be removed.

If you applied for food stamps (a government document by the standard proposed here), should that information be available for anybody to read and use how they see fit? What about passport applications? Military pay vouchers?

There certainly are government documents that can and should be kept private or perhaps even documents that might need to be made public but contain private information that needs to be removed before publication.

I should note that even Wikileaks goes through the documents it has to remove this kind of private information, and I consider that a good thing. Going through documents to remove this kind of information is labor intensive and takes time to accomplish, even if the document was made electronically. With a document being only available on paper makes this all that harder to accomplish.

Re:FOI request.

[FatLittleMonkey]

But this is kind of my point. If material is, say, classified, then someone has already sat down, looked at it, said "OMG, this is thuper thecret!" and stamped it classified. You've already paid someone to do that. Why didn't you pay them to mark the parts that are secret, so that the rest of the document is publicly available. (Properly designed, the document could be marked up for various levels of release, over time. I'm thinking commercial-in-confidence material on government contracts.)

Even with older paper documents, a one-off Google-books style mass-transfer would be cheaper in the long run than, a) disorganised on-demand piecemeal reviews and b) the loss of efficiency in not having that material widely available within government (and business.) (Seriously, how much work is duplicated, how much lost, by simply not having documents available within agencies, between agencies, between levels of government, by business?)

Material like your private records tend to be of a class, you don't need to review each document, so access can be routine even though restricted. (And some agencies do. It is getting better. But it's so ad hoc.)

Wiki: "The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) [...] was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 4, 1966"

It's not like it's a new concept. Surely after 45 years we shouldn't be seeing FOI laws setting out costs and limits as if someone has to manually review every document requested. If I can get it, it should already be available.

Conspiracy theorists will, like metalmaster below, will say that FOIA helps governments hide material. But experienced FOIA users apparently make multiple requests for the same document, because the convoluted rules mean that the same document must be separately reviewed for each request, and different reviewers will often redact different portions, so by comparing different versions you end up with more than any single reviewer would have granted. Good for freedom, but surely a secret-keeping government would prefer a single redacted version made at the time the document was first created?

Repealing the bill ain't enuf, People of Utah

[macraig]

Fine, so "they messed up" and the bill was repealed. Is that enough to really fix the problem? Was the problem the bill itself? No. The problem is the intent and mindset of the people who drafted, promoted, and passed the bill. Such mindsets never change, even if they admit publicly "we screwed up"; they don't actually believe they did screw up... they just got caught trying to screw you over. It's the people behind the bill that need to be repealed as well. Does repealing the bill also make them go away for good? No.

People of Utah, your work isn't done.

Re:We won?

[517714]

The Legislature, led by the Senate isn't done. Senate President Michael Waddoups said Monday, "We’re not going to repeal it until we have something to replace it with.” This is just intermission, the fat lady hasn't sung.

Re:We won?

[JimboFBX]

they'll probably replace it with a law that says you have a sign a form and put your self on a public registry every time you buy something with caffeine in it.

On a side if not entirely off topic note, I've come to the conclusion that there are (at least) 4 points to the political spectrum, not 2:

1. Conservative
2. Liberal
3. Progressive
4. Regressive

I've come to the conclusion that most republican candidates are Conservative/Regressive while many Democratic candidates are Liberal/Progressive. Libertarians are Regressive/Liberal, and most of the remaining parties are some point in between those 3. People who are highly Progressive aren't represented by a political party that I know of. Note that I am listing the stronger trait first.

Progressive means your goal is to fix what is wrong, Regressive means your goal is to revert back to the way things were or to intentionally ignore what is wrong based on philosophy. Progressive people don't necessarily make things better (not every engineer is a GOOD engineer), it is simply their goal to make things better.

Re:We won?

[aekafan]

Progressive means your goal is to fix what is wrong

This only works if you believe that your solution will fix something that is inherently broken. I keep hearing people in parts the spectrum you mention saying how they are the ones with the right solution. Every time they get power though, it keeps getting worse.

Where would those of us whom do not believe in even the possibility of good government (no matter who is in charge), fit into your neat categories there?

Now THAT'S funny!

[Dutchmaan]

A politician complaining about the media "lobbying" the public. I can't imagine a better definition of irony!

Re:We won?

[zippthorne]

Your definition of "progressive" bears very little resemblance to any actual political party or movement bearing that label. I fear that you have taken the bait and fallen enamored with the word --- "Oh yeah, progressive, that must be good. I'm for progress" --- and failed to recognize the only thing that they have a desire to progress is the power of the state.

You've even invented the obvious complementary position with which to paint the "foes of making things better"

Well, let me remind you of one of the policies of the actual progressive movement. A policy that lead to the rise in power of organized crime: Prohibition.

So, let's stop demonizing people here. Everyone with a political philosophy has the goal of fixing what's wrong, although there are wildly varying opinions on how to achieve that, and what exactly it is that is wrong.

Well, everyone that is, except those whose philosophy is "say anything to get as much for myself as possible, and to hell with everyone else." Unfortunately, this latter group, although I'd like to believe it is the smallest of the philosophies, is uncommonly good at actually achieving office...

Re:We won?

[517714]

Reactionary is the correct term for what he described as regressive, and he did not make them up. They do not wish to make things worse, but they do wish to undue certain aspects of "progress" Many fundamentalists regardless of name of their god are reactionary. Back to nature groups, survivalists, Amish, Hutterites, Mennonites, a lot of Mormons, America First groups are all reactionary to varying degrees.

Re:We won?

[ppanon]

Don't go looking for good government from those who claim that good government is not possible. They have every motivation to prove themselves right, consciously and subconsciously.

Re:We won?

[aztracker1]

I fervently disagree... I would consider myself fairly pragmatic with some libertarian ideals. I find that it isn't practical to completely revert to the constitution, but do find the current levels of taxation, and bloat in government to be more inhibiting than progressive. Bureaucracy breeds inaction. I do find it is the role of government to provide for defense and common infrastructure. It is the limits of what can be considered essential common infrastructure that is open to interpretation. However, I do feel that a government that was more limited with that POV would work out better. Neither the dems or repubs really support that and the groups you mention above are very far from describing me.

Re:We won?

[bhtooefr]

There's nothing to oppose them anyway, much of their power comes from buying off the government, and then getting the government to ignore its own laws to get more power...