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POLITICS: Activists Crawl Through Web to Untangle U.S. Secrecy
By William Fisher
NEW YORK, Nov 29 (IPS) - To combat the Bush administration's penchant for
secrecy, U.S. citizens have been forced to unearth new sources for
information they once read in their daily newspapers. But thanks to a few
dedicated individuals and not-for-profit groups - and the Internet - such
material is easier to come by than ever before.
"The Bush administration has taken secrecy to a new level. They have
greatly increased the numbers and types of classified documents," says
Steven Aftergood, who conducts one of the most widely used "open
government" programmes - the Federation of American Scientists (FAS)
Project on Government Secrecy.
"They have made it far more difficult and time-consuming to obtain
documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). And they have
imposed 'gag rules' on an ever-widening group of government employees,"
Aftergood added in an interview.
''Open government'' sites on the World Wide Web provide a wide variety of
information.
For example, on the Internet pages of George Washington University's
National Security Archive you can read Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
manuals from the 1960s and the 1980s specifying approved methods of
prisoner abuse as well as one of the last major pieces of the puzzle
explaining U.S. and UK roles in the August 1953 coup against Iranian
Premier Mohammad Mossadeq.
Or, just posted, the telephone conversations of former U.S. Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger, berating high-level subordinates for their efforts
in 1976 to restrain human rights abuses by military dictators in Chile and
Argentina.
OpenTheGovernment.org is a new coalition of 33 organisations dedicated to
combating unwarranted government secrecy and promoting freedom of information.
Among recent postings on that site: an evaluation by The Reporters
Committee for Freedom of the Press on "the likely impact of attorney
general nominee Alberto Gonzales on press freedoms and the public's right
to know," based on Reporters Committee research of Gonzales' performance as
a judge on the Texas Supreme Court from January 1999 to December 2000 and
as White House counsel since January 2001.
The FAS Project on Government Secrecy publishes 'Secrecy News', which
recently disclosed: "Americans can now be obligated to comply with
legally-binding regulations that are unknown to them, and that indeed they
are forbidden to know."
As an example, the website reports the effort of a former conservative
member of Congress to board a commercial airplane. "She was pulled aside by
airline personnel for additional screening, including a pat-down search for
weapons or unauthorised materials. She requested a copy of the regulation
authorising such pat-downs, and was told that she couldn't see it."
Why? "Because we don't have to," said an official of the Transportation
Safety Administration (TSA). "That is called 'sensitive security
information'. She's not allowed to see it, nor is anyone else," he added,
according to 'Secrecy News'. "She refused to go through additional
screening (without seeing the regulation), and was not allowed to fly."
According to Aftergood, the "variety of Internet-based sources has
increased substantially during the Bush administration. Freedom of
Information Act requests are on the rise, passing three million for the
first time last year."
"What is behind all of these phenomena is a growing public appetite for
official records," he argues. "That is a healthy impulse that in a
democracy should be respected and cultivated, not scorned."
Another site, BushSecrecy.org, sponsored by the highly respected Public
Citizen organisation, chronicles and documents the administration's
obsession with secrecy, as well as steps being taken to fight it.
The website provides a variety of electronic links to up-to-date summaries
of each of the administration's major secrecy initiatives, with additional
links from those summaries to key documents, such as executive orders,
congressional materials, judicial decisions and legal briefs filed by both
sides in the court battles raging over these issues.
The new Coalition of Journalists for Open Government has been established
"to provide timely information on freedom of information issues and on what
journalism organisations are doing to foster greater transparency in
government."
The coalition's website reports "the Department of Homeland Security is
requiring all of its 180,000 employees and others outside the federal
government to sign binding non-disclosure agreements covering unclassified
information. Breaking the agreement could mean loss of job, stiff fines and
imprisonment."
Like many "open government" websites, the coalition distributes a free
email newsletter. Other sites charge for documents. One such is
InsideDefense.com, which provides primary source documents gathered by a
team of Pentagon reporters, and issues a free weekly publication, 'The
Insider', to alert readers to new documents.
The FAS government secrecy project recently provided a sampling of other
Internet sources. A few examples:
- GlobalSecurity.org which says it provides "bottomless resources on all aspects of national security policy, and then some;"
- The Resource Shelf offers news on all aspects of government information policy and links to valuable source documents;
- The Memory Hole collects and publishes elusive records and documents that have been withdrawn from the public domain;
- Cryptome promises a rich collection of new official and unofficial
documents on security policy;
- Project on Government Oversight performs independent investigations to promote openness and government accountability;
- Electronic Privacy Information Centre offers declassified documents and insights on cryptography policy and privacy; and
- Nautilus Institute's Global Disclosure Project specialises in nuclear weapons policy and strategy.
Some "open government" websites are maintained by individuals, usually
associated with universities. For example, the Guide to Declassified
Documents and Archival Materials for U.S. Foreign Policy and World
Politics, a road map to declassified foreign policy records, is the work of
David N Gibbs of the University of Arizona.
FOI.net provides resources on national and foreign freedom of information
law from Alasdair Roberts of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public
Affairs at Syracuse University.
Has the proliferation of these websites had an impact on Bush
administration policies?
"Almost all of the recent statistical trends are negative, i.e. in the
direction of greater secrecy," says Aftergood. "So it would probably be an
exaggeration to say this work on challenging government secrecy has had
much of an impact on the government during the current administration."
But, "The real value of the work lies in the fact that it represents the
creation of alternate channels for public access to government
information," he adds.
"These efforts to provide new means of access are not exactly the solution
to government secrecy, but they are a constructive response that leaves the
public less vulnerable to official secrecy than it otherwise would be,"
according to Aftergood.
Most other observers interested in open government agree the Bush
administration is unlikely to change its attitude toward fuller disclosure
and, they predict the number of alternative sources will continue to grow.
But even the continuing proliferation of new information sources will not
correct some of the problems arising from excessive government secrecy.
For example, Timothy H Edgar, legislative counsel of the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) told IPS: "Basic information that is crucial to
oversight of the government's new spy powers under the Patriot Act - such
as how it is using new powers to obtain personal records - has been
cloaked in secrecy, making it impossible to judge the effectiveness of
these powers or their impact on civil liberties."
(END/2004)
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