This much secrecy fails to protect Americans By MYRIAM MARQUEZ, Orlando Sentinel

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft changed the meaning of the Freedom of Information Act from a presumption of disclosure to a rationale for secrecy. In October 2001, he advised federal agencies not to release documents to the press or the public so long as they had any possible legal rationale to keep them hidden from public view. That memo was in the works even before the terrorist attack, which should give all Americans pause.

The memo was overkill. …

Accidents are more likely than terrorist attacks on [chemical] plants. Now people are more vulnerable, not less, because they haven’t a clue what risks they face. Until it’s too late. …

Emergency response teams know what’s in a rail car by a sign that’s posted on the side of the tank car detailing the deadly chemicals it might carry. Now federal agencies are considering removing those placards from all trains as a way to “protect” the public from terrorists with devious plans.

Rail workers, firefighters and other emergency workers aren’t too happy with the proposal. Even chemical companies prefer to keep the signs in public view. …

The problem with secrecy for security’s sake is that it doesn’t protect us. It simply spares the government any accountability to the public.

If citizens can’t know what train routes carry potentially poisonous materials, which nuclear plants are vulnerable or what underground pipelines are carrying through our towns, then we have no clue if our government is indeed keeping us safer from terrorists. The real threat is using secrecy to hide public-policy decisions that are supposed to keep us safe.

It’s a delicate balancing act, and right now the scales have tipped way too far, at our peril.

Guest opinion: Government openness ensures the consent of the governed – billingsgazette.com
By JOHN CORNYN, R-Texas
U.S. Senator

Just last month, U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., a longtime champion of open government at the federal level, and I joined forces to introduce the OPEN (Openness Promotes Effectiveness in our National) Government Act of 2005, to strengthen and enhance our federal open government laws. It has been nearly a decade since Congress has approved major reforms to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). And the Senate Judiciary Committee has not convened an oversight hearing to monitor compliance with FOIA since 1992. So this week, I will chair a Senate hearing to examine needed improvements to our open government laws. …

After all, open government is not a Republican or a Democrat issue; it is an American issue. Indeed, the bill is supported by a broad coalition of open government advocates and organizations across the ideological spectrum.

Open government is a fundamental principle of our democracy. As President Lincoln once said, “No man is good enough to govern another without that person’s consent”-and of course, consent is meaningless if it is not informed consent. For that very reason, the cause of open government is as American as our commitment to constitutional democracy.
—–
Track S.394 OPEN Governement Act

Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged TV News By DAVID BARSTOW and ROBIN STEIN

To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The “reporter” covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the Agriculture Department’s office of communications.

Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed HUNDREDS of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government’s role in their production.

This winter, Washington has been roiled by revelations that a handful of columnists wrote in support of administration policies without disclosing they had accepted payments from the government. But the administration’s efforts to generate positive news coverage have been considerably more pervasive than previously known. At the same time, records and interviews suggest widespread complicity or negligence by television stations, given industry ethics standards that discourage the broadcast of prepackaged news segments from any outside group without revealing the source. …

A recent study by Congressional Democrats offers another rough indicator: the Bush administration spent $254 million in its first term on public relations contracts, nearly double what the last Clinton administration spent.