EFF: Obama’s Transparency Promise: We’re Still Waiting

By Daniel Dietrich | Published: April 20, 2009

Die US-Amerikanische NGO Electronic Frontier Foundation EFF macht sich Sorgen, ob die von Präsident Obama versprochene Politik hin zu mehr Transparenz und mehr demokratischer Kontrolle politischer Entscheidungen und administrativer Prozesse denn auch tatsächlich umgesetzt wird. Dazu schreibt David L. Sobel in einer “legal Analyisis” für die EFF: Obama’s Transparency Promise: We’re Still Waiting

When President Obama – in one of his first official acts – committed his new administration to an “unprecedented” level of transparency, EFF applauded the change in policy. Likewise, when Attorney General Holder, at the President’s direction, issued new guidelines liberalizing agency implementation of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), we welcomed it as a “particularly promising development.” But we also noted that it remained to be seen whether reality would match the rhetoric as the new policy was applied, particularly in the context of pending lawsuits – several of which EFF is pursuing – that challenge Bush-era decisions to withhold requested information.

Unfortunately, the early indicators are not encouraging. Last week, the Justice Department told a federal judge (PDF) in Washington that the FBI – despite the new Holder FOIA guidelines – will not be altering its previous decision to withhold a substantial amount of information concerning its massive Investigative Data Warehouse (IDW), which the Bureau describes as “the FBI’s single largest repository of operational and intelligence information.” The database contains hundreds of millions of records and has been characterized as an “uber-Google.”