Obama is less open with FOIA requests than Bush?!

[thewayne]

Somehow, I'm not surprised.

"Agencies under the Obama administration cite security provisions to withhold information more often than they did under the Bush administration. For example, the 'deliberative process' exemption of the Freedom of Information Act was used 70,779 times in 2009, up from the 47,395 of 2008. Amusingly, the Associated Press has been waiting three months for the government to deliver records on its own Open Government Directive."

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9EFRPJG0&show_article=1

http://politics.slashdot.org/story/10/03/18/1851243/Obama-Administration-Withholds-FoIA-Requests-More-Often-Than-Bushs?art_pos=26

Comments

[silveradept]

Hrm. What I gout out of the article when I read it is "Government Lackeys are not following their President's Directive" more than "this administration is keeping more secrets". That said, this administration does resemble its predecessors a lot, so maybe it is malice instead of incompetence.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

The thing that I found most interesting was that the number of FOIA requests coming in have gone down, while the number of exemptions cited have gone up, meaning the percentage of exemptions have climbed at an even higher rate.

[silveradept]

Ouch. Makes it sound like darkness is status quo, now, rather than exception that requires good justification. Or maybe it's because this is the first administration that can take advantage of all of the darkness tricks from day one, instead of having to have them enacted.