The Right To Know

I went to Watching America yesterday looking for something specific, but had one of those serendipitous moments in which what I found was so much better that I don't even remember what my initial search was for. This article in China's Ifeng explores a concept which we tend to take for granted, that of our right to know just what our government is doing.

We tend to think of the right to know as a peculiarly American ideal, but, as this opinion piece points out, it's a right that all people deserve and one that many governments espouse. President Hu of China listed it first on a list of four basic rights. Now, while the leader of China may just have been paying lip service to that right, at least he acknowledged its importance.

Here in the US, that right is enshrined in the Freedom of Information Act, a law which was enacted during President Lyndon Johnson's administration. The law was obviously not a big hit with members of his administration, especially those working in the Pentagon. It still isn't. It's tough to pry information out of any agency, especially when secrecy is cloaked in "security" needs. Dogged journalists still find ways to get enough information to inform the public if they are tenacious enough. And that is what this article is ultimately about.

...don’t be mistaken — the right to know, as an important democratic principle and a civil right, was not freely given to the people by the Constitution — at least not in England, France or America. ...

America started to legally recognize the people’s right to know when the Freedom of Information Act was passed in 1966 and took effect in 1967. President Lyndon Johnson, the president who signed the law, praised the law, saying that it showed that the United States "values highly the right of the people to know how their government is operating."

The passage of this law created an entirely different situation compared to how this issue was previously handled. ...

The inspiration that I drew from the American federal government and its people’s movement toward the right to know is that in order to gain the trust of its citizens, the government cannot rely solely on its “benevolent policy.” It has to rely on the law. The government has to make sure that there are laws to follow, and the laws must be followed. As for the public, it is not enough that the laws exist. People have to use the laws to counter the government actions and use the laws to protect themselves. [Emphasis added]

Like any muscle, this right has to be exercised constantly if it is to maintain its usefulness and purpose. Journalists and citizens themselves have to constantly request full information, not just the partial, heavily redacted mess that the government tends to send out until the lawsuits make it too embarrassing not to comply. Only in this way can citizens protect themselves from government over-reaching.

The reason why President Hu put the right to know above the other three rights is not because it is the most important right. It is because in modern, civilized society, without the right to know, people cannot truly have their right to participate, their right to express or their right to oversee the government’s actions. How can you participate when you know nothing? How can you express freely when you are kept in the dark? How can you oversee the government’s actions when you as a citizen don’t even know what the government is doing?

Precisely.

And well said.

Rules? What Rules?

There's an interesting editorial in today's Los Angeles Times. A program which allows those undocumented immigrants in custody for whatever reason to stipulate to immediate deportation has suddenly become wildly successful:

In the last few years, the number of illegal immigrants in detention who waived their right to plead their case to remain in the United States has shot up from 5,500 in 2004 to 35,000 this year. In all, nearly 100,000 people have agreed to leave the country under "stipulated removal."

So, what's the problem? After all, the deal is a good one for both sides, right? Rather than sit in detention for months, perhaps even years, the 'illegal' can choose to just go back home immediately. As a result, the taxpayers save a lot of money by not having to house, feed, and monitor the miscreant. Perfect.

Uh, no, not so perfect. As the editorial points out, many of these undocumented immigrants have good arguments for being allowed to stay in the US, yet it is not clear that they have been advised of those rights. In fact, it is unclear just what guidelines the government has been operating under in dealing with those immigrants under the "stipulated removal" program.

Immigrant rights organizations have consequently filed a law suit seeking to compel the government to reveal those guidelines:

...Wednesday, three nonprofit legal organizations filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, asking the court to compel the government to turn over documents under the Freedom of Information Act. According to one internal memo wrested from the government, such records ought to exist. It says that field offices are to "establish consistent written procedures for reviewing and approving stipulated removal orders." If they are established, why aren't these written procedures available?

The editorialist has a few more questions for the government, and they are right on the mark:

Here's what we need to know: How are immigrants informed of their rights, and how are those rights being upheld? For example, are victims of crimes, people who face persecution at home or immigrants with family members who are U.S. citizens apprised that they may have unique circumstances that would allow them to stay? Are they warned that a deportation will be on their permanent record and that reentering the U.S. could trigger criminal penalties? And is the process standardized across the nation?

What I suspect is that the government may have formulated rules, and then promptly put them away somewhere. After all, it's the government. Rules are only for the little people, i.e., the rest of us. I also think that Grover Norquist was lying when he talked about "shrinking" government, at least if the Bush administration is any measure of that philosophy. What he really meant is that the government's duty to serve those it governs was going to shrink. Governmental power? Eh, not so much.

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.

No Holds Barred

On its last lap, the occupied White House has definitively shown that its oft-invoked legacy is going to be one of utter disregard for the public, and this world. The final slap at the environment is one that discards the flimsy excuse that the cretin in chief has been giving for inaction - that a cleaner coal burning plant was in the works, in the planning process.

The award was recently made, of a plant named FutureGen to be located in Illinois. This week FutureGen was called off. The bait and switch was passed off by Energy Dep't. officials as if it were another triviality to be swept under the rug. Fooled you.

For years, FutureGen has been offered up as the answer to tough questions facing the Bush administration about power and pollution.

The concept for a cutting-edge, cleaner coal plant was mentioned frequently when the White House's commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions was in doubt.

But now, only six weeks later, the Department of Energy has unexpectedly and unceremoniously killed FutureGen.
(snip)
FutureGen provided the Bush administration with political cover as pressure to address environmental issues increased. Now, with this term winding down, the Department of Energy has pulled the plug.

Up until the end, administration officials had touted the project as a "centerpiece" of its efforts to develop more advanced coal technologies. And during last week's State of the Union address, President Bush pressed for cleaner coal.

Within 48 hours, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman was blaming cost overruns for FutureGen's demise and announcing a pared-down plan to pay for equipment that captures and stores carbon dioxide emissions at several commercial coal plants.

The new plan pulled out of the hat will include Rep. Joe Barton, minority leader of the Energy Committee, home town Jewett, TX, in a number of clean burning coal plants that will get a now scatter-shot location of federal funding. Sequestering the carbon pollution will be funded in several locales, to be announced sometime a few years from now, there's your latest environmental planning.

The ending of this war criminal regime is full of little surprises. Another has been that since Sen. Bunning of Tennessee has released his hold on legislation to allow public access to public information in the form of a president's papers. The torch to burn the records has passed to Sen. Jeff Sessions.

The Presidential Records Amendment Act of 2007 seeks to overturn an executive order signed by President Bush early in his term. It greatly expanded the ability of a president, or his heirs, to withhold from the public papers from the administration.
(snip)
"I am disappointed Senator Sessions has placed a hold on this bipartisan, open access bill," Mr. Lieberman said in a written statement. "To the White House, which is apparently behind these objections, I would say let's find a way to work together to pass this legislation so that the people's right to information about how their government works can be maintained."

The White House remains adamantly opposed to the bill, arguing that it violates the separation of powers and would prompt unnecessary lawsuits.

The worst administration in history is developing the worst limp on its way out. No offense will go uncommitted, no public interest go untrammeled.

If there's any decency left after this last year of the occupied White House, it will not be because the War Criminal In Chief didn't try to remove it.

Keeping Things Murky

Given the White House preference for secrecy, it comes as no surprise that the rest of government has developed a similar attitude. What comes as a surprise, however, is that federal agencies are doing so in the face of a 1996 law requiring more transparency. From today's Washington Post:

In 1996, Congress intended to keep government ahead of the curve by amending the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to require that agencies put more public information on their Web sites. Posting important and most-requested records online, the theory went, would burn through a raft of hard-copy FOIA requests, save money and eliminate waiting time. ...

A review of 149 federal agencies found that only 1 in 5 posts on its Web site all the records required and that even fewer -- 6 percent -- tell people how to request what does not appear there. Two-thirds do not provide indexes to their major records systems, or they provide guides that are so unclear they are worthless. Only 1 in 4 agencies includes an online FOIA submission form on its Web site.

This failure to comply with the law, advocates of open government say, amounts to another stiff-arm by the executive branch to Congress's demand for greater transparency.

The worst offender of the law? The Defense Department, one of the agencies responsible for the development of the internet. It can hardly claim lack of expertise in website building, so one is left with the conclusion that it deliberately chose not to comply with the e-FOIA of 1996.

Congress might want to look into why federal agencies such as the Defense Department can't comply with federal law.