freedom of information act

Marcy Wheeler at Firedoglake has an interesting take today on the most recent summary of classified documents that the government turned over to the American Civil Liberties Union Friday, as part of its response to the organization’s Freedom of Information Act requests about the destruction of 92 videotapes of CIA interrogations. The documents reveal what [...]

R.E.M., Pearl Jam, Billy Bragg and David Byrne don’t like to think of music as torture, or part of any “enhanced interrogation techniques.” But declassified government documents show that at least some music — notably, Metallica, Britney Spears and some unidentified rap music, according to a 2004 Defense Department report — were used to “create [...]

To follow up on my earlier post about Rep. Louis Slaughter (D-N.Y.) and her speech on her colleagues’ move to amend the Freedom of Information Act to prevent the release of photographs depicting abuse of detainees in U.S. custody, it’s worth looking at the conference report on the bill. The bill is called the “Protected [...]

Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) today blasted the Obama administration, as well as some of her colleagues in the House and Senate, for including a provision in the Homeland Security Appropriations Bill that would amend the Freedom of Information Act to exempt from disclosure photos depicting the abuse of detainees in U.S. custody.
After the jump, Slaughter’s [...]

That’s one of the questions coming up in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit being argued today by the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of 23 lawyers who believe they may have been wiretapped without a warrant by the National Security Agency during the Bush administration. But the government won’t answer the question.
The NSA [...]

As Spencer noted, in responding to a federal judge’s order to turn over another batch of documents including President George W. Bush’s authorization of CIA secret prisons, and records of investigations into the abuse of detainees in U.S. custody, the Department of Justice instead opted to file a document yesterday explaining why it’s actually not [...]

The Justice Department on Thursday again delayed disclosure of three critical legal memos written by Steven Bradbury, then a lawyer in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), that reportedly authorized the the CIA to torture prisoners. This is at least the second time that the government has postponed responding to a federal judge [...]

On March 11, President Obama issued a signing statement attached to an omnibus spending bill that qualified a small but important provision that would deny a salary to a federal manager who “interferes with or prohibits certain communications between federal employees and Members of Congress.” In his signing statement, the president said that the provision [...]

The National Security Archive at Georgetown George Washington University today announced that the Federal Bureau of Investigation won its annual award for worst Freedom of Information Act performance by a federal agency.  The FBI has apparently been unable to find records in response to two-thirds of the FOIA requests it’s received over the past four [...]

It’s hard to divine the Justice Department’s intentions on almost anything these days, given that Attorney General Eric Holder has barely been in office two weeks and doesn’t even have all of his senior staff yet. But if I were trying to read the tea leaves, I’d say we got a good sign yesterday.
As I [...]