White House to release new gov't data collections

The White House on Tuesday instructed every federal agency to publish before the end of January at least three collections of "high value" government data on the Internet that never have been previously disclosed, an ambitious order to make the administration as transparent as President Barack Obama had promised it would be.

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Sen: Gov't shouldn't have closed openness workshop

A Republican senator who sponsored a law meant to help people with open-records requests says a government workshop on openness shouldn't have been closed to the public.

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The Puget Sound Business Journal for months has asked the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS), the federal agency that regulated Washington Mutual, to release internal communications between WaMu's regulators.

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Soon, the public will be able to see how seriously the government is taking President Barack Obama's call for more transparency at executive branch agencies like the Pentagon, the State Department, and the Department of Health and Human Services.

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In Italy, a judge ruled that a station chief for the Central Intelligence Agency and 22 other Americans broke the law in the 2003 abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, a Muslim cleric who ended up in Egypt, where he said he was tortured.

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It's not often that an appellate court decision reflects so vividly what a country has become, but such is the case with yesterday's ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Arar v. Ashcroft (.pdf).

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The government has opened the data flood gates and said "geeks, come on in!" at an event called GovHack, held last weekend in Canberra.

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It has been widely reported that in the coming days Attorney General Eric Holder will likely appoint a prosecutor to investigate potential crimes of torture and cruelty used on detainees in U.S. custody.

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Every state that signed on to the legislation -- and we didn't just sign on to it, we were the ones pushing every other country to sign it -- is obligated to prosecute those who engage in torture under its jurisdiction, and no excuse whatsoever can justify such actions.

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Notice how carefully he words that sentence. The individuals subjected to torture (I refuse to use that ridiculous euphemism) gave us good intelligence, he says; what he does not say, because he can't support it, is that it was the torture that made them do so.

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Any criminal inquiry could face challenges, including potent legal defenses by CIA employees who could argue that attorneys in the Bush Justice Department authorized a wide range of harsh conduct.

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It would be one thing for the Obama administration to argue that there is no value in releasing torture photos specifically, and in investigating and imposing accountability for past abuses generally, if there were consensus among Americans that torture is wrong, barbaric and --  …

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President Barack Obama's strict ban on lobbyist contributions will limit the haul from Thursday night's fundraising dinner for congressional Democrats, but organizers have found a way around it: a morning-after event at the same hotel where lobbyists — and their money — w …

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How dare the Obama Administration limit the ability of lobbyists to use insider connections to purchase and cajole favors and legislation and make all contacts with administration officials part of the public record? It's unconstitutional!

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The man President Barack Obama selected to be his top deputy at the Department of Housing and Urban Development is leaving his last public job with a huge legal bill for violating Washington's open government laws, in a case tied to Seattle's taxpayer-financed NFL stadium and its …

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Although, I will say that even though I don't partake, I do think pot should be legalized…Think of the tax dollars we would get off of it… and I don't really think pot by itself is any worse than alcohol… I actually believe cigarettes are worse than pot… Only pot that …

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Last month dozens of public interest groups welcomed the election of Barack Obama with a call to reverse eight years of secrecy and restore openness in the executive branch.

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I expect my government to accept that democracy relies upon what citizens can see, examine, challenge, and debate. Those in power must let go of the delusion that democratic life is somehow safer wrapped in lies. Government must stop hiding information.

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In 2008, one of Goldwater's proteges is running for president with the same kind of backers and a similar agenda updated to account for the fall of the Soviet Union, the rise of Islamist jihadists, and unbelievable persistence of the neocons, who are now trying to sell us a new w …

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Bush Admin - The Most Secretive Govt Ever? Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

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a recent report by the group "OpenTheGovernment.org" found "a continued expansion of government secrecy across a broad array of agencies" and that the "administration of President George W.

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One very brave and clever young man with his own scheme to become state representative and I will certainly be donating! What a great idea.

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Government secrecy does not make us safer; it undermines the Constitution.

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There is more transparency in legislation than ever before, Miller said. But he disagrees with putting bills up for all to rewrite.

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There is nothing unusual about an open-government group advocating new legislation that would shine a light on the secretive ways of Congress and the executive branch.

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The National Records and Archives Administration has responsibility for the billions of electronic records that federal agencies produce annually, including architectural plans for federal buildings, weapons systems designs, White House e-mails, and memos from every department an …

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The 2001 terrorist attacks led every state but South Dakota to restrict access to information deemed critical to homeland security — from architectural blueprints to emergency evacuation routes, according to a comprehensive, state-by-state study of post-9/11 changes to open-gov …

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