More Secrecy
The Bush administration has taken another step towards walling government off from the public. This time it's a new designation for information that the government can't justify calling "Secret" but which it doesn't want anyone to know about. From Walter Pincus in today's Washington Post:
Sometime in the next few years, if a memorandum signed by President Bush this month ever goes into effect, one government official talking to another about information on terrorists will have to begin by saying: "What I am about to tell you is controlled unclassified information enhanced with specified dissemination."
That would mean, according to the memo, that the information requires safeguarding because "the inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure would create risk of substantial harm."
Bush's memorandum, signed on the eve of his daughter Jenna's wedding, introduced "Controlled Unclassified Information" as a new government category that will replace "Sensitive but Unclassified."
Such information -- though it does not merit the well-known national security classifications "confidential," "secret" or "top secret" -- is nonetheless "pertinent" to U.S. "national interests" or to "important interests of entities outside the federal government," the memo says. ...
Left undefined are which laws or policies generated the requirement for protecting such information, and which interests are pertinent. ... [Emphasis added]
What is known is that the decision to impose the CUI designation on information is going to be left to the head of the agency or department involved, in other words, to the political appointees. That itself is rather frightening, given the executive appointees of the last 7+ years. And those people are going to be given some pretty expansive powers in the designation of information as CUI:
Designating information as CUI is left to the "head of the originating department or agency," based on "mission requirements, business prudence, legal privilege, the protection of personal or commercial rights, safety, or security."
Will the terms of government contracts with private businesses qualify for CUI? How about plans to undercut elections by instigating bogus election fraud investigations?
Perhaps the most distressing part of this new system is that the public just might not be able to stop any abuses by the government because they won't be able to find out about them in one of the few ways we have, the Freedom of Information Act:
The "controlled" classification "may inform," but will not determine, whether information can be made public in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
We'll have to trust to the courts, now packed with Bush appointees because the Democrats in both the 109th and 110th Congresses caved in.
Here is just one more reason why we really do have to rally around the Democratic nominee for President, no matter which one it is. Sen. McCain will just continue the tradition.
246 days.
Sometime in the next few years, if a memorandum signed by President Bush this month ever goes into effect, one government official talking to another about information on terrorists will have to begin by saying: "What I am about to tell you is controlled unclassified information enhanced with specified dissemination."
That would mean, according to the memo, that the information requires safeguarding because "the inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure would create risk of substantial harm."
Bush's memorandum, signed on the eve of his daughter Jenna's wedding, introduced "Controlled Unclassified Information" as a new government category that will replace "Sensitive but Unclassified."
Such information -- though it does not merit the well-known national security classifications "confidential," "secret" or "top secret" -- is nonetheless "pertinent" to U.S. "national interests" or to "important interests of entities outside the federal government," the memo says. ...
Left undefined are which laws or policies generated the requirement for protecting such information, and which interests are pertinent. ... [Emphasis added]
What is known is that the decision to impose the CUI designation on information is going to be left to the head of the agency or department involved, in other words, to the political appointees. That itself is rather frightening, given the executive appointees of the last 7+ years. And those people are going to be given some pretty expansive powers in the designation of information as CUI:
Designating information as CUI is left to the "head of the originating department or agency," based on "mission requirements, business prudence, legal privilege, the protection of personal or commercial rights, safety, or security."
Will the terms of government contracts with private businesses qualify for CUI? How about plans to undercut elections by instigating bogus election fraud investigations?
Perhaps the most distressing part of this new system is that the public just might not be able to stop any abuses by the government because they won't be able to find out about them in one of the few ways we have, the Freedom of Information Act:
The "controlled" classification "may inform," but will not determine, whether information can be made public in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
We'll have to trust to the courts, now packed with Bush appointees because the Democrats in both the 109th and 110th Congresses caved in.
Here is just one more reason why we really do have to rally around the Democratic nominee for President, no matter which one it is. Sen. McCain will just continue the tradition.
246 days.
Labels: Bush Legacy, Freedom of Information Act, Governmental Secrecy
posted by Diane at 3:58 AM
3 Comments:
Is it possible that they just don't get this democracy thing?
Oh, that's right ... we're all on a need-to-know basis because w're the little people.
They just keep topping themselves.
That was me ... sorry.
(and I'm not even Greek)
great post
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