FOIA – Page 20 – National Freedom of Information Coalition

Public Open Data: The Good, the Bad, the Future

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From Idea Lab: New technology tools, combined with raised expectations among voters and stakeholders for government transparency, have sparked a movement toward “open government.” Championed by advocacy organizations and a few high-profile elected officials, the trend seeks to promote greater accountability and responsiveness for the systems of representative democracy. An area of particular opportunity — as well as potential concern — is the growing cache of large datasets of public information now available on the Internet.

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D.C. Circuit rejects FOIA access to White House visitor logs

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From The Blog of Legal Times:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled today that records of visitors to the White House were off limits to requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Allowing public access to the information would circumvent Congress' intent to give the president discretion to keep his appointments calendar secret, the court said.

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Talks behind ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ will stay secret

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From Courthouse News Service: Though makers of the film "Zero Dark Thirty" were given access to the officers who helped take out Osama bin Laden, a government watchdog cannot get the same treatment, a federal judge ruled.

A few months after a team of Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 2, 2011, Judicial Watch learned that the Defense Department and CIA had been communicating with director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal.

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Battle to control public records requests heats up in Washington

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From Mercer Island Reporter: Those looking for a more transparent government are increasingly relying on public records to make it happen.

They hope the more documents they obtain, the clearer their view of what’s really going on behind closed doors in school districts, city halls and county buildings.

But there are those throughout the public sector convinced some of these Washingtonians are abusing the Public Records Act.

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DOJ ordered to turn over documents in Ensign probe

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From TheHill.com: The Justice Department is being forced to hand over an index of every document amassed in its criminal investigation of former Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.).

The federal court decision will grant the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) watchdog group a broad list of what documents the DOJ possesses and the reasons why Justice is arguing to withhold them from the public.

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CIA closes office that declassifies historical materials

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From latimes.com: The budget ax has fallen on a CIA office that focused on declassifying historical materials, a move scholars say will mean fewer public disclosures about long-buried intelligence secrets and scandals.

The Historical Collections Division, which has declassified documents on top Soviet spies, a secret CIA airline in the Vietnam War, the Cuban missile crisis and other major operations, has been disbanded. The office that handles Freedom of Information Act requests will take over the work.

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CIA formally acknowledges its role in 1953 Iranian coup

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From USA Today: The CIA, in recently declassified documents, has formally acknowledged that the spy agency helped to plan and execute the coup in Iran in 1953 that overthrew the democratically elected prime minister who was in the process of nationalizing the country's British-controlled oil industry.

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Four unique approaches to government crowdsourcing

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From GovExec.com: What Is Crowdsourcing?

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Sen. Feinstein wants to limit who can be a journalist

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From Watchdog.org: The most recent congressional threat to the free press in the United States comes from California Democrat U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

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