We’re living daily with the threat of terrorism. Yet an attack is a vague notion, many readers have told me.
But another type of attack is quite real and under way: excessive government secrecy in the name of national security.
Recent incidents serve as reminders that in these post-9-11 days, although there is clear and urgent need for clandestine government operations, excessive secrecy has resulted in absurdities such as creating at least 50 types of restrictions on unclassified information, according to government watchdog OpenTheGovernment.org.
Other absurdities:
The 2007 farm bill contained an exemption to the Freedom of Information Act that would criminalize disclosure or use of any information from the National Animal Identification System.
The Associated Press has reported that the White House had axed 10 of 14 pages of prepared testimony to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regarding health effects of climate change.
Earlier this year, a chilling complaint arose from the State Department’s Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation. The committee works with the Office of the Historian in preparing and publishing the official historical record of U.S. foreign policy and providing public access to records 25 years or older.
The committee reported last June that “the issue of balancing security and public access has become increasingly acute. The problem of the CIA prohibiting quotation or citation from [previous administrations'] President’s Daily Briefs in Foreign Relations volumes continues to be a serious restriction.
“The blanket denial by the CIA of the right to quote or cite from the President’s Daily Briefs of the Nixon years and beyond will make it difficult to give a full and accurate rendering of the effect of intelligence assessments on the foreign relations of the United States.”
Journalists sympathize.
Lois Norder, the Star-Telegram’smanaging editor in charge of the investigative team, encounters many government obstacles to obtaining public information. Two common problems, she said, involve entities’ placing an exorbitant price tag on information and providing that information in complex form.
“State and local governments often estimate the cost of records in the thousands of dollars,” she said. “This year, one local school district told us we would have to pay hundreds of dollars for some sensitive information (on student discipline) that other school districts provided for free.” The paper negotiated an affordable cost, she said.
“The economic barriers have become an effective way of blocking the public from important information.
“At times, governments also seem to provide information in a form that makes it difficult to analyze,” Norder said. “Rather than provide spending information in a spreadsheet, for example, governments will provide it in a read-only pdf. That’s another effective barrier to the information that the public might want.
“I became so concerned over that issue that we asked our attorney about what legal right we may have to obtain information in formats we want. The upshot: Current law does not allow us to specify that the information should be in a specific format.
“While paying homage to transparency, government officials have become increasingly savvy about ways to prevent unwanted scrutiny,” she said. “They are less likely to deny the information outright — they just find ways to discourage public information.”
The preface to a report for the People for the American Way Foundation and OpenTheGovernment.org notes:
“Citizens deprived of relevant information cannot participate in their government’s decisions or hold their leaders accountable. Without this check, government officials are more likely to make decisions contrary to the public interest, abuse their authority, and engage in corrupt activities.
“In words that ring prophetic today, James Madison warned in 1822, ‘A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both.’”
