Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the high court’s newest addition, was given the honor of issuing the first ruling of the Supreme Court’s term yesterday. On its face, the case — about the right to appeal a judge’s order to disclose confidential attorney-client communications — doesn’t look very controversial, and More…
Following up on President Obama’s Transparency Memoranda signed on his first day in office, the White House today issued two new documents pledging openness: An “open government directive” instructing the heads of federal departments and agencies to take specific actions to open their operations to More…
This weekend’s news that inmates at the part of the prison at the U.S. Air Base in Bagram, Afghanistan, run by Special Operations forces had suffered abuse sounded eerily reminiscent of the charges we’ve heard from previous prisoners victimized by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay. Joshua Partlow and Julie Tate at More…
Anticipating that the debate over reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act will soon come to the Senate floor, Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) and Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) on Tuesday asked Attorney General Eric Holder to declassify key information about how the law’s “business records provision” has More…
A military commission judge has ruled that the types of abusive techniques U.S. interrogators used on a suspected 9-11 conspirator are irrelevant to determining his competence to stand trial, the Miami Herald reports.
Ramzi bin al Shibh is one of five men charged by the U.S. military commission More…
This story, which was reported in The Guardian and confirmed by publicly filed court documents, is one of the stranger means the Obama administration has used thus far to keep quiet the sins of its predecessor.
As I’ve written before, lawyers representing the ex-Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed have been More…
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 More…
The Foundation of American Scientists reports today in Secrecy News that in a letter to President Obama, the Public Interest Declassification Board — created by Congress in 2000 to advise the president on declassification of government documents — warned that public access to government information “may be More…
A heated confrontation is brewing between the Obama administration and the federal judiciary.
Late on Friday, the Justice Department’s lawyers filed a brief with a federal district court in California challenging the court’s power to carry out its own order. The government lawyers insisted that the court has More…
President Obama’s sweeping reversals of torture and state secret policies are about to face an early test.
After Obama issued an executive order and two presidential memoranda last week proclaiming a new transparency in the workings of the federal government, advocates for open government were thrilled.
“That was an order More…
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