Sunday 29 January 2012
Under Obama, the Freedom of Information Act is Still in Shackles
Three years ago this past weekend, on his first full day in office, President Barack Obama issued his now infamous memo on transparency and open government, which was supposed to fulfill his campaign promise to lead the “most transparent administration in history.” Instead, his administration has been just as secretive—if not more so—than his predecessors, and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has become the prime example of his administration’s lack of progress.
In 2009, Obama made FOIA reform the centerpiece of his open government agenda. “My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government,” he said, while laying out principles he wished to see his agencies adopt in the proceeding months. In March of 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder issued what the Justice Department called “comprehensive new Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) guidelines.” Holder ordered that all executive branch departments and agencies were to apply “a presumption of openness” in response to FOIA requests.
In 2010, EFF’s senior counsel David Sobel testified to Congress, calling on the Obama to lead by example if they wish to change the FOIA process.
Unfortunately, secrecy won out in the Obama administration almost immediately. In the early months of his presidency, a court ruled that the administration would have to turn over photos related to the Abu Ghraib torture scandal in response to a FOIA request. Knowing they’d likely lose the appeal, Obama supported a new law that could keep information secret even when FOIA would otherwise require disclosure. The bill’s only intention was to create a way to shield photographs of detainee abuse from public disclosure.
President Obama also refused at first to release White House visitor records, a practice for which his predecessor, George W. Bush, was pilloried. The Obama Administration appealed a court’s ruling that the visitor logs were subject to FOIA. In September 2009, Obama reversed course and agreed to release voluntarily White House visitor records going forward. But in 2011, the Administration was still fighting in court to keep the logs before Obama’s reversal a secret.
The Associated Press looked at the administration’s commitment to transparency in 2010 and concluded Obama was using FOIA exemptions to withhold information from requesters more than Bush did in his final year, despite receiving fewer overall requests. And one of the most frequently used exemptions was one Obama explicitly told the agencies not to use: the “deliberative process” exemption, which allows the government to withhold documents dealing with its decision making process. In Obama’s first year in office, the use of the exemption skyrocketed from 47,395 times in 2008 to 70,779 times in 2009.
Worse, more than a year after Obama and Holder’s memos, a National Security Archive study found “less than one-third of the 90 federal agencies that process such FOIA requests have made significant changes in their procedures.” Even FOIA requests on transparency were held up:
More damage was done to FOIA in the Dodd-Frank bill. A little-noticed provision of the recently passed financial-reform legislation stated that the SEC “no longer has to comply with virtually all requests for information releases from the public, including those filed under the Freedom of Information Act.” Other media organizations have lodged public complaints about FOIA procedure at the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and even agencies dealing with health and scientific issues like the EPA and NASA.
EFF has experienced many of these problems first hand. When we sued the FBI after it was revealed they were systematically abusing their National Security Letter authority, the bureau redacted the vast majority of the thousands of pages requested. In another case, it was clear the FBI was redacting arbitrarily information when it wasn’t appropriate. The DHS singled out EFF, along with other activist groups and media representatives such as the ACLU, EPIC, Human Rights Watch, and AP, for an extra layer of review on its FOIA requests. EFF sued just to find out the names of the members of Obama’s Intelligence Oversight Board.
But by March 2011, only 49 of the 90 federal agencies had followed any “specific tasks mandated by the White House to improve their FOIA performance.” The National Security Archive found in July that federal backlogs of FOIA requests are growing. A Study released in December of this year by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and OpenTheGovernment.org found the administration was withholding information using nine of the most common exemptions 33% more than George Bush’s last full year in office.
But perhaps the worst violation of Obama’s open government principles was the deplorable attempt by the Justice Department to change the DOJ’s own FOIA regulations. Under the proposed rule, instead of refusing to confirm or deny a document is in the Department’s possession, the agency could "respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist." The Los Angeles Times called it an “outrageous proposal” that “provides a license for the government to lie to its own people and makes a mockery of FOIA.” After near universal outcry, including pressure from Congress, the Justice Department scaled back its rules. But as the Sunlight Foundation said, the Justice Department’s revised FOIA rules were still “worse than reported” and allow reviewers to dismiss requests for a host of trivial reasons. Obama’s Justice Department seemed intent on killing the very law it championed at the start of his administration.
The Freedom of Information Act has been hailed by open government advocates as “one of the most significant laws ever passed by the U.S. Congress,” yet its passage and survival has been fought by Presidents for more than forty years. The bill, as a significant check on executive power and secrecy, was originally opposed by Lyndon Johnson, yet was signed into law in 1966. When Congress strengthened the act after the Watergate scandal, President Ford vetoed it on the advice of his then-chief of staff Dick Cheney. Thankfully, Congress overrode his veto. Reagan’s Attorney General Edwin Meese was so opposed to FOIA, despite its being law for more than 20 years, he wrote a memo telling the Justice Department to disregard essentially requests it disliked.
President Obama promised to change all that. Unfortunately, it’s clear many of his pledges have been broken or ignored, turning his declaration that he would lead the “most transparent administration ever” into a punch line rather than a re-election slogan.
Trevor Timm @'EFF'
In 2009, Obama made FOIA reform the centerpiece of his open government agenda. “My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government,” he said, while laying out principles he wished to see his agencies adopt in the proceeding months. In March of 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder issued what the Justice Department called “comprehensive new Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) guidelines.” Holder ordered that all executive branch departments and agencies were to apply “a presumption of openness” in response to FOIA requests.
In 2010, EFF’s senior counsel David Sobel testified to Congress, calling on the Obama to lead by example if they wish to change the FOIA process.
Unfortunately, secrecy won out in the Obama administration almost immediately. In the early months of his presidency, a court ruled that the administration would have to turn over photos related to the Abu Ghraib torture scandal in response to a FOIA request. Knowing they’d likely lose the appeal, Obama supported a new law that could keep information secret even when FOIA would otherwise require disclosure. The bill’s only intention was to create a way to shield photographs of detainee abuse from public disclosure.
President Obama also refused at first to release White House visitor records, a practice for which his predecessor, George W. Bush, was pilloried. The Obama Administration appealed a court’s ruling that the visitor logs were subject to FOIA. In September 2009, Obama reversed course and agreed to release voluntarily White House visitor records going forward. But in 2011, the Administration was still fighting in court to keep the logs before Obama’s reversal a secret.
The Associated Press looked at the administration’s commitment to transparency in 2010 and concluded Obama was using FOIA exemptions to withhold information from requesters more than Bush did in his final year, despite receiving fewer overall requests. And one of the most frequently used exemptions was one Obama explicitly told the agencies not to use: the “deliberative process” exemption, which allows the government to withhold documents dealing with its decision making process. In Obama’s first year in office, the use of the exemption skyrocketed from 47,395 times in 2008 to 70,779 times in 2009.
Worse, more than a year after Obama and Holder’s memos, a National Security Archive study found “less than one-third of the 90 federal agencies that process such FOIA requests have made significant changes in their procedures.” Even FOIA requests on transparency were held up:
The AP is still waiting–after nearly three months–for records it requested about the White House's "Open Government Directive," rules it issued in December directing every agency to take immediate, specific steps to open their operations up to the public.Yet around the same time, when President Obama was asked a question at a townhall about why his administration wasn’t more transparent, he responded by saying it was the most transparent in the modern era. What was his first reason? The administration's release of White House visitor records—the same records they went to court to fight to keep secret. The President also bragged: “We’ve revamped the classification system so it’s not used to hide things that might be embarrassing to us.” Which, of course, is not true either. As EFF has pointed out, government secrecy and overclassification has reach absurd levels under Obama.
More damage was done to FOIA in the Dodd-Frank bill. A little-noticed provision of the recently passed financial-reform legislation stated that the SEC “no longer has to comply with virtually all requests for information releases from the public, including those filed under the Freedom of Information Act.” Other media organizations have lodged public complaints about FOIA procedure at the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and even agencies dealing with health and scientific issues like the EPA and NASA.
EFF has experienced many of these problems first hand. When we sued the FBI after it was revealed they were systematically abusing their National Security Letter authority, the bureau redacted the vast majority of the thousands of pages requested. In another case, it was clear the FBI was redacting arbitrarily information when it wasn’t appropriate. The DHS singled out EFF, along with other activist groups and media representatives such as the ACLU, EPIC, Human Rights Watch, and AP, for an extra layer of review on its FOIA requests. EFF sued just to find out the names of the members of Obama’s Intelligence Oversight Board.
But by March 2011, only 49 of the 90 federal agencies had followed any “specific tasks mandated by the White House to improve their FOIA performance.” The National Security Archive found in July that federal backlogs of FOIA requests are growing. A Study released in December of this year by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and OpenTheGovernment.org found the administration was withholding information using nine of the most common exemptions 33% more than George Bush’s last full year in office.
But perhaps the worst violation of Obama’s open government principles was the deplorable attempt by the Justice Department to change the DOJ’s own FOIA regulations. Under the proposed rule, instead of refusing to confirm or deny a document is in the Department’s possession, the agency could "respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist." The Los Angeles Times called it an “outrageous proposal” that “provides a license for the government to lie to its own people and makes a mockery of FOIA.” After near universal outcry, including pressure from Congress, the Justice Department scaled back its rules. But as the Sunlight Foundation said, the Justice Department’s revised FOIA rules were still “worse than reported” and allow reviewers to dismiss requests for a host of trivial reasons. Obama’s Justice Department seemed intent on killing the very law it championed at the start of his administration.
The Freedom of Information Act has been hailed by open government advocates as “one of the most significant laws ever passed by the U.S. Congress,” yet its passage and survival has been fought by Presidents for more than forty years. The bill, as a significant check on executive power and secrecy, was originally opposed by Lyndon Johnson, yet was signed into law in 1966. When Congress strengthened the act after the Watergate scandal, President Ford vetoed it on the advice of his then-chief of staff Dick Cheney. Thankfully, Congress overrode his veto. Reagan’s Attorney General Edwin Meese was so opposed to FOIA, despite its being law for more than 20 years, he wrote a memo telling the Justice Department to disregard essentially requests it disliked.
President Obama promised to change all that. Unfortunately, it’s clear many of his pledges have been broken or ignored, turning his declaration that he would lead the “most transparent administration ever” into a punch line rather than a re-election slogan.
Trevor Timm @'EFF'
Saturday 28 January 2012
ASIO tight-lipped on refugees in limbo
ASIO is refusing to explain why it ruled four male refugees, who could be detained in Darwin for the rest of their lives, are a threat to security.
The Darwin Asylum Seeker Support Network says three Tamil Sri Lankans and a Burmese Rohingyan cannot understand why ASIO says the men are a threat to Australia's security.
They have been recognised as refugees by the Immigration Department but could spend the rest of their lives in detention because of the negative assessments.
Darwin Asylum Seeker volunteers who visit the men say they are traumatised because they do not know why they failed the tests, and cannot challenge the ASIO assessments.
ASIO will not comment on the individuals for security reasons.
The spy agency says it is the competent authority to make assessments in relation to Australia's security, and says any questions regarding the detention of asylum seekers are a matter for the Immigration Department.
A spokesman says less than one per cent of the more than 7,000 security assessments of irregular maritime arrivals undertaken by ASIO in the past two years have been given an adverse security assessment.
@'ABC'
The Darwin Asylum Seeker Support Network says three Tamil Sri Lankans and a Burmese Rohingyan cannot understand why ASIO says the men are a threat to Australia's security.
They have been recognised as refugees by the Immigration Department but could spend the rest of their lives in detention because of the negative assessments.
Darwin Asylum Seeker volunteers who visit the men say they are traumatised because they do not know why they failed the tests, and cannot challenge the ASIO assessments.
ASIO will not comment on the individuals for security reasons.
The spy agency says it is the competent authority to make assessments in relation to Australia's security, and says any questions regarding the detention of asylum seekers are a matter for the Immigration Department.
A spokesman says less than one per cent of the more than 7,000 security assessments of irregular maritime arrivals undertaken by ASIO in the past two years have been given an adverse security assessment.
@'ABC'
Hüsker Dü: Where Were They Then? (1999)
BONUS:
Live At Camden Palace 1985Sad to say that until fairly recently I would have said that one of the bands that I wished that I had caught live was this mob and then I found a live tape that I made of them in Amsterdam around this time!!! *ahem*
Upside Down, Left To Right: A Letterpress Film
A short film about letterpress and one of the few remaining movable-type printing workshops in the UK, situated at Plymouth University, featuring Paul Collier. plymouth.ac.uk
A film by Danny Cooke dannycooke.co.uk
Soundtrack by Tony Higgins tonyhiggins.org
(Available to download here: goo.gl/exGL1)
Via
♪♫ Mark Stewart VS Primal Scream - Autonomia
Mark Stewart vs Primal Scream
'Autonomia' will be released through Future Noise Music on February 20th, a dense agit-protest superfunk monster with sirens and Bobby Gillespie's frenetic 'keeping the dream alive' call-and-response chant with Mark Stewart who explains the story behind the song - "I'd written this song about Carlo Giuliani, who was killed at the G8 demonstrations in Genoa. At that point, it was a protest ... afterwards I started getting on with Bobby and I asked Adrian [Sherwood] about doing it. It's important that people hear about the story, it's the message and the atmosphere as much as anything.'
Directed by Douglas Hart (founding member and bassist of The Jesus and Mary Chain) with Dominic Lee & Chiara Meattelli, the video exhibits a raw, riotous & feverish vivacity infused with the artists' trademark punk rock ethos to convey the song's deep political message.
"Starting out as a teenager in the late 70s with the Pop Group and thru the 80's with the Maffia up to his new solo record, Mark Stewart has led the attack on conformist reality. Mark is a constant inspiration and a true Thief of Fire. A poet of paranoia and a great laugh. What a guy." - Primal Scream
'Autonomia' will be released through Future Noise Music on February 20th, a dense agit-protest superfunk monster with sirens and Bobby Gillespie's frenetic 'keeping the dream alive' call-and-response chant with Mark Stewart who explains the story behind the song - "I'd written this song about Carlo Giuliani, who was killed at the G8 demonstrations in Genoa. At that point, it was a protest ... afterwards I started getting on with Bobby and I asked Adrian [Sherwood] about doing it. It's important that people hear about the story, it's the message and the atmosphere as much as anything.'
Directed by Douglas Hart (founding member and bassist of The Jesus and Mary Chain) with Dominic Lee & Chiara Meattelli, the video exhibits a raw, riotous & feverish vivacity infused with the artists' trademark punk rock ethos to convey the song's deep political message.
"Starting out as a teenager in the late 70s with the Pop Group and thru the 80's with the Maffia up to his new solo record, Mark Stewart has led the attack on conformist reality. Mark is a constant inspiration and a true Thief of Fire. A poet of paranoia and a great laugh. What a guy." - Primal Scream
Friday 27 January 2012
Who is benefitting from the Mega shutdown? And were Mega's D2F plans behind the major label's attack?
Via
NMEmagazine NME Magazine
Barack Obama causes sales of Al Green's 'Let's Stay Together' to go up by 490% bit.ly/xHPFOJ
Barack Obama causes sales of Al Green's 'Let's Stay Together' to go up by 490% bit.ly/xHPFOJ
♪♫ Ari Up & the New Crew - True Warrior (2001)
Ari Up & the New Crew, featuring Dunia Best of Brave New Girl, performing live at the Wetlands Preserve NYC on Sep 9 2001
(Thanx Joly!)
Black & White & Through To Black Again - A Joy Division Mixtape: Permutated by Mattress Grave
1) Novelty – Joy Division.
2) Digital – Joy Division.
3) Komakino – Joy Division.
4) Ice Age – Joy Division.
5) Failures – Joy Division.
6) Shadowplay (RCA Demo) – Joy Division.
7) Atrocity Exhibition – Joy Division.
8) Transmission (Genetic Records Session) – Joy Division.
9) The Kill – Joy Division.
10) Day Of The Lords – Jy Division.
11) Interzone (Live at The Factory) – Joy Division.
12) Exercise One – Joy Division.
13) Colony – Joy Division.
14) Something Must Break – Joy Division.
15) From Safety To Where? – Joy Division.
16) The Sound Of Music – Joy Division.
17) Glass – Joy Division.
18) She’s Lost Control (Live at Lyceum Ballroom, London) – Joy Division.
19) Auto-Suggestion – Joy Division
20) I Remember Nothing (Live At Winter Gardens, Bournemouth) – Joy Division.
21) Candidate – Joy Division.
22) Incubation – Joy Division.
23) The Drawback (RCA Demo) – Joy Division.
24) Means To An End – Joy Division.
25) No Love Lost – Joy Division.
(Thanx SJX!)
Lee 'Scratch' Perry: 'When I was a man, I was a cannibal'
'I respect myself like God' … Lee 'Scratch' Perry. Photograph: Philip Ryalls/Redferns
See footnotes at bottom of storyHello Lee, where are you now?
I'm in my bedroom.
What can you see from your window?
[Wife repeats the question, slowly] I can see ice and snow (1). What goes on. What can you see?
I'm stuck in the Guardian office. I wish I was looking at snow.
Maybe you are, who knows. Maybe you have double vision.
What is an average day like for you?
An average day is like the sun shining and it's nice and you can see clouds flying and things like that. On a rainy day, on a winter's day, you stay indoor depending on what your mood is like.
How do you describe your personality?
I describe my personality as like an animal among cannibals. I don't like to say that I'm a man, because I don't want to be a man. I think I'm an angel.
What's wrong with being a man?
They do things that the devil do. Understand? Understand when I was a man I was a cannibal. I decide not to be a man, I want to be an angel, so I don't eat what the man eat. I don't smoke what the man smoke. So I stop smoke. I stop eating what man eat. I stop eat fish, I stop eat meat. I stop eat like an animal. I don't smoke any more because I wish to be healthy. So what man do I don't do any more. I do different.
What do you like to eat now? What is your favourite vegetable?
I like broccoli, I like cabbage, calalou (2), choko and others.
So mainly green vegetables, no orange ones?
I drink orange juice, I eat banana. Brown banana, green banana, whatever banana it is, I like it.
You're in your 70s. What keeps you performing (3)?
My wife needs money, and she has a lot of bills to get paid, and I will have to help her pay the bills. Lot of people believe in God but they are not aware of God. God is alive and God is coming like a thief in the night [chuckles again]. You know God don't tell no one when he is coming. It could be a couple years, it could be three years, five, it could be 10. That's the idea. My wife love luxury, she loves money. She loves good food, she always wants to eat in good restaurants, and the shoes, the best clothes, the best everything. See, I believe in less, but my wife believe in best. She believe in vanity [huge laugh].
Do you have any opinions on taxation?
I look upon it from a balance point of view because if it wasn't for tax so many people die because some people don't have job. It a little bit rough and tough without the tax. Half the world would be eating and drinking, and the other half would die beause they wouldn't have anything. It's ok for me, it's a little bit tough but somebody have to help somebody.
The western world is in turmoil what role can music play to make it better?
My music is for people who believe in god. So if people believe in God this is what my music can do for them. The people believe in Jesus Christ, it can help them. But if they believe in the AntiChrist it cannot help them. People who believe in God make music will hear positive words, perfect love and it will heal their soul. If they believe in the devil it can't help them.
You made an album called Super Ape (4). Do you ever think of him?
Well, the Super Ape to me is an image. And the image, we all in the belly of the Super Ape. The interpretation of the Super Ape is in the Super Space. The army, the sky, the firmament are in the image of the Super Ape. So we are living in the Super Ape.
We are living in him? He is like the universe?
The Super Ape is all the galaxy. All the comets of the universe.
Do you ever listen to dubstep?
Dubstep is all right because that's when me start to walk like the Super Ape. Man start fear and the people just start to move towards it, because of the declaration of monster. Monster walk, monster dance, monster shake, monster rock and that's what goes on. Dubstep Super Ape dubstep this dubstep that, it's all like machine, robot affair. Monster robots, yeah? (5)
Oh definitely, monster robots. What is the most important issue in the world right now?
That you have a father inside of you. The church try not to tell you, but you yourself are the church and our Father who art in heaven is in you. Heaven is in the Father, and heaven is in you because the Father creates you. So when you pray and you say "our Father who art in heaven" instead of saying Our Father say Our Farter.
Instead of saying "Our Father", you say "Our Farter"?
Yes. Because God give you the breath of life and it goes into you. Later what goes into you wants to go outside. So when it wants to go outside it means a fart.
Like fart from your bottom!
Our father give you the breath of life and when it want to go outside it go "pooooo"! That a farting noise. And poo is really good to make music for the bass line. And the bassline is like "poo, poo, pooopooo poo" or something like that. The breath of life is fresh air.
That makes sense to me. Can I ask you one last question? What is the message you would like our readers to follow?
The message is that you can see yourself as a Son of God, see yourself as a King of God see yourself as a Prince of God. Do your prior, do your exercise and buy the food and eat it and the drink. Don't smoke too much, you destroy your lungs. You disrespect yourself and you become sick: all the bacteria and the virus and all them tings. All that cause virus and bacteria – I stop doing them. I respect myself like God.
So no marijuana, just broccoli?
When the time come when you have to stop smoke, you can drink it. You can make soup with it, you can make tea with it and make other things. Like soup. Treat it like a present or a treasure. A lot of people take herbs, but if a lot of people take this herb, then there wouldn't be the riots.
Don't smoke it, drink it!
Drink it. Or you could eat it like a vegetable. Or something like that. One love.
Footnotes
1 Lee lives in Switzerland and has done for the past 32 years.2 Calalou is another name for collared greens; choko is an alternative name for cheyote, a green vegetable of the gourd family. 3 Lee plays the Forum in Hatfield on 3 February, and the O2 Academy Bristol on 4 February.
4 A 1976 album by Perry's band the Upsetters, which is held as a classic in the dub reggae genre.
5 It may be Lee is confusing the music of dubstep with dancing to dub, or a dub "step". It may be, however, that he's not.
Paul MacInnes @'The Guardian'
Kimble Goes Monaco 1 & 2
Kimble, our internethero goes to Monaco with his friends, spending a good $10.000.000 during one Formula 1 weekend!
One year later Kimble wants to go and visit the Monaco Grand Prix once more! So guess what, he invited his friends again, now even a bigger group and they drive off in the most expensive cars you can imagine for a $10.000.000+ weekend in Monaco!
Kimble, also known as Kim Dotcom is currently being indicted for copyright fraud as owner of Megaupload.
The man really is an idiot w/ absolutely NO taste at all...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
