Desperately Seeking Sunshine

This week is Sunshine Week: seven days of events and activities organized by a coalition of advocacy groups to put a spotlight on the need for more openness in government.

Good open government policies, like the 1966 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), are fundamental to the ACLU's work. The FOIA law allows organizations like the ACLU, reporters, and ordinary citizens to demand release of government records. On the national security front, among the FOIA requests and FOIA lawsuits we've filed include queries seeking information about the Bush administration's torture of detainees in U.S. custody, the murders of innocent civilians in Iraq, FBI spying on anti-war protestors, the CIA and Defense Department's use of National Security Letters, and the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program. Right now, we're pursuing the release of unredacted transcripts of the Combatant Status Review Tribunal hearings in order to see Guantanamo detainees' first-hand descriptions of their abuse and torture in U.S. custody.

We've made good use of the FOIA and we're making sure that everyone else understands this incredibly important tool as well.

While we have succeeded in gaining access to a lot of important information about government policies through the FOIA, government secrecy has impeded our work in serious ways. For example, because of the government's blithe and repeated invocation of the state secrets privilege to cover up egregious and systematic misconduct like the NSA warrantless wiretapping or the kidnapping and torture of foreign citizens, we've repeatedly had the courthouse doors slammed shut in our faces when we've tried to challenge the government's surveillance and rendition practices. So on Capitol Hill, our Washington Legislative office is actively lobbying for the passage of more good open government legislation. Right now, we're supporting the State Secrets Protection Act of 2008, introduced just last week by Representatives Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), Thomas Petri (R-Wisc.), John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.), and Bill Delahunt (D-Mass.). Senators Arlen Specter (R-Penn.) and Ted Kennedy's (D-Mass.) introduced S. 2533, similar legislation in the Senate, in January. Conyers said in a release on the House bill:

The current administration has too frequently used the state secrets privilege to cloak its activities involving rendition, torture, and warrantless surveillance.While matters of national security require the protection of classified information, our court system is clearly capable of handling this information with the appropriate discretion and care. The executive branch should not be able to escape accountability in the courts and congressional oversight by abusing the state secrets privilege and an independent judge would ensure that does not happen.

Clearly, Congress has a greater understanding of the need for a more open and accountable government than our current president, who just a few weeks ago weakened FOIA by refusing to fund the FOIA ombudsman role he approved in last year's S. 2488, the Open Government Act. A new report shows that while Bush talked the talk by saying he'd reduce the backlog of FOIA requests across all government agencies back in 2005, the backlog has actually grown 31 percent since then. Way to go, President Bush!

The American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) commissioned a survey that found that an astonishing 75 percent of Americans think the government is "very to somewhat secretive." That's up from 62 percent from the same survey taken last year. Ninety percent will consider candidates' stances on open government when voting in November's election.

When a whopping three-quarters of the public thinks the government's hiding something, clearly it's going to take more than a week's worth of sunshine to get it all out in the open. But every time we widen the blinds, it improves our ability to see and do what needs to be done.