Tag Archives: FOIA

News

Freedom of Information Act request processing delayed by Democrats

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Story from the Washington Post. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

For at least a year, the Homeland Security Department detoured hundreds of requests for federal records to senior political advisers for highly unusual scrutiny, probing for information about the requesters and delaying disclosures deemed too politically sensitive, according to nearly 1,000 pages of internal e-mails obtained by The Associated Press.

The department abandoned the practice after AP investigated. Inspectors from the department’s Office of Inspector General quietly conducted interviews last week to determine whether political advisers acted improperly.

The Freedom of Information Act, the main tool forcing the government to be more open, is designed to be insulated from political considerations. Anyone who seeks information through the law is supposed to get it unless disclosure would hurt national security, violate personal privacy or expose confidential decision-making in certain areas.

But in July 2009, Homeland Security introduced a directive requiring a wide range of information to be vetted by political appointees for “awareness purposes,” no matter who requested it. The government on Wednesday estimated fewer than 500 requests underwent such political scrutiny; the Homeland Security Department received about 103,000 total requests for information last fiscal year.

Career employees were ordered to provide Secretary Janet Napolitano‘s political staff with information about the people who asked for records – such as where they lived, whether they were private citizens or reporters – and about the organizations where they worked.

If a member of Congress sought such documents, employees were told to specify Democrat or Republican.

This, despite President Barack Obama‘s statement that federal workers should “act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation” under FOIA, and Attorney General Eric Holder‘s assertion: “Unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles have no place in the new era of open government.”

The special reviews at times delayed the release of information to Congress, watchdog groups and the news media for weeks beyond the usual wait, even though the directive specified the reviews should take no more than three days.

The foot-dragging reached a point that officials worried the department would get sued, one e-mail shows.

A new era of transparency and accountability! Not at all like paranoid Richard Nixon! No, no, no!

And we’re still operating without a budget – they don’t want to say how large the deficits are before the election!

News

MUST-READ: NASA admits that their data is worse than CRU Climate-gate data

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Story here from Fox News. (H/T Andrew)

Excerpt:

NASA was able to put a man on the moon, but the space agency can’t tell you what the temperature was when it did. By its own admission, NASA’s temperature records are in even worse shape than the besmirched Climate-gate data.

E-mail messages obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that NASA concluded that its own climate findings were inferior to those maintained by both the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) — the scandalized source of the leaked Climate-gate e-mails — and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center.

The e-mails from 2007 reveal that when a USA Today reporter asked if NASA’s data “was more accurate” than other climate-change data sets, NASA’s Dr. Reto A. Ruedy replied with an unequivocal no. He said “the National Climatic Data Center’s procedure of only using the best stations is more accurate,” admitting that some of his own procedures led to less accurate readings.

“My recommendation to you is to continue using NCDC’s data for the U.S. means and [East Anglia] data for the global means,” Ruedy told the reporter.

“NASA’s temperature data is worse than the Climate-gate temperature data. According to NASA,” wrote Christopher Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who uncovered the e-mails. Horner is skeptical of NCDC’s data as well, stating plainly: “Three out of the four temperature data sets stink.”

Global warming critics call this a crucial blow to advocates’ arguments that minor flaws in the “Climate-gate” data are unimportant, since all the major data sets arrive at the same conclusion — that the Earth is getting warmer. But there’s a good reason for that, the skeptics say: They all use the same data.

“There is far too much overlap among the surface temperature data sets to assert with a straight face that they independently verify each other’s results,” says James M. Taylor, senior fellow of environment policy at The Heartland Institute.

My guess is that they’ll need a lot of government money to research why their data is so corrupted. But Obama will surely oblige them.