Slashdot Mirror
Trump Administration Kills Open.Gov, Will Not Release White House Visitor Logs (techdirt.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: It will never be said that the Trump presidency began with a presumption of openness. His pre-election refusal to release his tax returns set a bit of precedent in that regard. The immediate post-election muffling of government agency social media accounts made the administration's opacity goals um clearer. So, in an unsurprising move, the Trump administration will be doing the opposite of the Obama administration. The American public will no longer have the privilege of keeping tabs on White House visitors. TIME reports: "The Trump Administration will not disclose logs of those who visit the White House complex, breaking with his predecessor, the White House announced Friday. White House communications director Michael Dubke said the decision to reverse the Obama-era policy was due to 'the grave national security risks and privacy concerns of the hundreds of thousands of visitors annually.' Instead, the Trump Administration is relying on a federal court ruling that most of the logs are 'presidential records' and are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act." So, to further distance himself from the people he serves (and the people who elected him), Trump and his administration have shut down the transparency portal put in place by the previous Commander-in-Chief: "White House officials said the Administration is ending the contract for Open.gov, the Obama-era site that hosted the visitor records along with staff financial disclosures, salaries, and appointments. An official said it would save $70,000 through 2020 and that the removed disclosures, salaries and appointments would be integrated into WhiteHouse.gov in the coming months."
If you're that much of a coward to not suffer the consequences of your actions, what else are you trying to hide?
Why does this have a familiar ring to it? Oh, yeah. It's the essence of the "If you haven't done anything wrong, why is your privacy so important to you" argument.
You quoted Judicial Watch 2 times. They aren't a reliable source.
Your disparaging assessment as an Anonymous Coward with no evidence to support your claim is unreliable. He also linked to a Huffington Post article, well ok it was by Andrew Breitbart, but that article links to a New York Times article:
"Here at the Caribou on Pennsylvania Avenue, and a few other nearby coffee shops, White House officials have met hundreds of times over the last 18 months with prominent K Street lobbyists -- members of the same industry that President Obama has derided for what he calls its "outsized influence" in the capital.
On the agenda over espressos and lattes, according to more than a dozen lobbyists and political operatives who have taken part in the sessions, have been front-burner issues like Wall Street regulation, health care rules, federal stimulus money, energy policy and climate control -- and their impact on the lobbyists' corporate clients.
But because the discussions are not taking place at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, they are not subject to disclosure on the visitors' log that the White House releases as part of its pledge to be the "most transparent presidential administration in history." "
Obama did to right.
The Obama administration regularly faked the visitor's logs, by editing out anyone they didn't want to admit was meeting with the President or White House staff. Or just not bothering to record hundreds of guests. Or by recording the names of people that didn't actually show up, but were cleared to do so. Or by holding meetings 'off site' so they wouldn't show up in the logs.
In other words, the Obama Administration's policy was to distribute flat out falsehoods, rather than transparency. Hiding everything isn't better, but don't dare pretend "Obama did it right".