Het congres begint omkerend geheimhouding

Hoewel de huidige democratisch-Geleide zitting van Congres met zijn eindejaarsreces met slechts een middelmatige lijst van verwezenlijkingen begon, begon het om de dia van het beleid van Bush in grotere overheidsgeheimhouding om te keren. Zowel keurden het Huis als de Senaat handily de wetgeving goed deze week die het federale Akte van de Vrijheid van Informatie versterkt en opnieuw bevestigt dat de burgers het recht hebben te weten wat hun overheid tot is.

It’s the first major revamping of the FOIA in 10 years and, most important, begins to reestablish the fact that open government is intrinsic to the operations of a successful democracy, an ideal that President Bush and his cohorts dampened in the past seven years.

Foremost in the reforms is an indirect reversal of former Attorney General John Ashcroft’s order in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, in which he instructed federal agencies to lean against releasing information if they were uncertain about how its being made public would impact national security.

We’ve seen too often since then how the Ashcroft order was abused to essentially block citizens and the media from gaining requested information.

The new legislation sets up more responsive guidelines for agencies responding to FOI requests. Most important, it restores the presumption that government information to be released unless there is a specific finding that disclosure would cause harm. Penalties on federal agencies that do not comply with the new rules have been substantially increased.

In addition, the legislation brings nonproprietary information held by government contractors under the FOIA.

Majority Democrats had planned a more expansive rolling back of the Bush secrecy initiatives. However, the party’s slim majorities in both chambers required more compromise with minority Republicans. Still, this strengthening of the FOIA provides a good start to letting the sunshine in which can be built upon in 2008.

http://www.connpost.com/opinion/ci_7774070

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