Government Transparency, A Promise Unfulfilled

The Associated Press did an analysis of how well the Obama administration was doing on his promise to have "the most transparent administration in history", and it's not looking good according to their analysis in an article published by The Guardian.

The government's own figures from 99 federal agencies covering six years show that halfway through its second term, the administration has made few meaningful improvements in the way it releases records. In category after category — except for reducing numbers of old requests and a slight increase in how often it waived copying fees — the government's efforts to be more open about its activities last year were their worst since President Barack Obama took office.
And five years after Obama directed agencies to less frequently invoke a "deliberative process" exception to withhold materials describing decision-making behind the scenes, the government did it anyway, a record 81,752 times.
"I'm concerned the growing trend toward relying upon FOIA exemptions to withhold large swaths of government information is hindering the public's right to know," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "It becomes too much of a temptation. If you screw up in government, just mark it 'top secret.'"

Freedom Of The Press?

The Department of Justice secretly obtained the phone records of the Associated Press in what the AP calls a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into news-gathering operations.  The records were for a 2 month period and included the office, home and cell numbers of  individual reporters and editors as well as phones in various AP offices and the AP line at the House of Representatives.  The records would not have included the contents of the calls, but would have shown the phone numbers of people or agencies that reporters called, and could have included numbers of those who called reporters and the length of the conversations.  The records were from a year ago, and the world is only now learning that it happened.  The reason behind the tap is unclear, but prosecutors have been investigating how the AP learned of an al Qaeda plot in Yemen before it was public last year.
Reactions came from around the world, unanimously negative.

• The American Civil Liberties Union called the subpoenas "an unacceptable abuse of power."  “Freedom of the press is a pillar of our democracy, and that freedom often depends on confidential communications between reporters and their sources.”
• "There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of the Associated Press and its reporters," Gary B. Pruitt, president and chief executive of the Associated Press, said in a letter to Holder.
• The Guardian said  "Although Obama was elected on a liberal ticket in 2008 and again in 2012, his administration has mounted a sustained campaign through the courts and other means against whistleblowers, particularly in relation to what it claims are sensitive intelligence matters."
• House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) called the DOJ subpoena “very disturbing” in an article in The Hill.
• The National Press Club said "This appears to be a gross violation of press freedom," said National Press Club President Angela Greiling Keane, a Bloomberg News reporter. "If there's a good explanation for this, the public has a right to hear it promptly."
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  Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/05/13/5417366/national-press-club-requests-explanation.html#storylink=cpy
  Senator Patrick Leahy, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement emailed to AP: "I am very troubled by these allegations and want to hear the government's explanation.

Yeah, I want to hear it too.

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