bezpieczenstwo panstwa - access denied

[Gość: Guardian]

Access denied

America's strong tradition of freedom of information is being seriously
threatened by the Bush administration, writes Matthew Kasper

Wednesday August 6, 2003

Two years ago, George Bush signed an executive order limiting the release of
former presidential records in order to "protect national security". Civil
liberties campaigners were up in arms. With a stroke of his pen the president
had undermined America's Freedom of Information Act [FOIA], which requires
the disclosure of all but the most sensitive federal government information.

Controversy over the release of government documents persists, the most
recent examples being the administration's refusal to declassify a report on
the September 11 attacks believed to link Saudi Arabia with the Islamist
hijackers. To many, the future of freedom of information in the US has never
looked more fragile.

But even if the power of this legislation is waning under the current
administration, the role the FOIA has played in the past cannot be
overlooked. In its short existence it has built a successful record of
exposing government scandals and corrupt cabinet officials. At the very
least, it has provided some dramatic headlines - thanks to it we now know
that Lucille Ball's father forced her to register as a communist and that
novelist William Faulkner was the victim of several extortion attempts.

The FOIA establishes a presumption that records held by agencies and
departments of the executive branch of the US government are accessible to
the people. This was a marked change in how information was previously
released. Before it was enacted in 1966, the burden was generally on the
individual to establish a right to examine any government records. There were
no statutory guidelines or procedures in place to help a citizen seeking
information; there were no judicial remedies for those denied access.

With the passage of the FOIA, the burden of proof switched from the
individual to the government: the "need to know" standard was replaced by
the "right to know" doctrine. In theory, the government now has to justify
the need for secrecy. In practice, however, government officials can invoke
exceptions, for instance in cases of national emergency.

In 1996, the then president Bill Clinton expanded the powers of the FOIA to
extend into the electronic media. He praised the FOIA as "an effective legal
right of access to government information, underscoring the critical need in
a democracy for open access to government information by citizens". As part
of this process, the FBI was forced to download tonnes of files chronicling
everything from the innocuous accounts of John Wayne's chummy relationship
with J Edgar Hoover, to the strong interest by FBI officials in German author
Thomas Mann's membership of the communist party.

Some activist legal firms, such as the Public Citizens group, have relied on
the FOIA as a backdrop for past litigation against silicon and tobacco
companies reluctant to disclose potentially harmful information about their
products to citizens.

Overall, the FOIA is used sparingly outside the federal courtroom. Within,
however, it is justly famous. In the 70s, the FOIA was referenced by supreme
court judges as the justification for overturning President Nixon's attempts
to exercise executive privilege to prevent the Washington Post from
publishing the Pentagon papers. The papers, containing files detailing two
decades of US government involvement in Vietnam, were offered to the people
because their "right to know" took precedence over government pleas to limit
public information.

The FOIA was used again in the 80s to expose government subterfuge in Ronald
Reagan's administration as military fall guy Oliver North was forced to hand
over notes in the Iran Contra affair.

If nothing else, the history of the FOIA shows that even if it appears to
have been temporarily weakened under the present administration, it still
retains the potential to shine a light into the darker corners of government.
It's done it before, so there's no reason why it can't do it again.