President Donald Trump’s administration announced Friday that the White House won’t release records of its visitors, raising new concerns from transparency advocates.
The decision not to voluntarily disclose White House visitor logs is a break from the policy of former President Barack Obama’s administration, even though Trump had called his predecessor the “least transparent president.”
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From TalkingPointsMemo: Solicitor General Donald Verrilli and Sen. Diane Feinstein have put federal prosecutors in quite a bind after they made public comments about the use of secret NSA surveillance in terrorism investigations.
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Read More… from Feds fight to prevent NSA disclosures in criminal cases
From Electronic Frontier Foundation: In a major victory in one of EFF's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits, the Justice Department conceded yesterday that it will release hundreds of documents, including FISA court opinions, related to the government’s secret interpretation of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the law the NSA has relied upon for years to mass collect the phone records of millions of innocent Americans.
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Read More… from Hundreds of pages of NSA spying documents to be released
From Politico: Federal courts are "far too deferential" to the executive branch's claims that information classified on national security grounds and shouldn't be released to the public, a prominent federal judge said Monday.
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Read More… from Judge: Courts too deferential on classified information
From Northwest Public Radio: The US Attorney in Seattle has stepped in to block the release of information about a once-secret program under which fictitious driver licenses were issued by the state of Washington. In a letter to the state, Jenny Durkan’s office says the documents are “classified national security information.”
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Read More… from US Attorney blocks release of information on CIA driver licenses
From Federation of American Scientists:
As often happens, the Federal Bureau of Investigation invoked national security a few years ago to justify withholding certain information from a Freedom of Information Act requester named Deirdre McKiernan Hetzler.
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Read More… from Court orders FBI to release information sought in FOIA request
