A Transparent Lack of Transparency: FOIA

 

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) provides Untied States citizens with the ability to request information the government has collected.

Its purpose is to allow citizens to oversee, evaluate, and correct how the federal government functions.  It requires all government agencies to maintain their own records, and be able to divulge information in an efficient manner and with reasonable fees.

According to the FOIA the very first documents which must be distributed are those detailing where the public can make a request, how the public can make a request, and about what the public can make a request.  The list of what can be requested includes, but is not limited to; opinions delivered on court cases, policies adopted by agencies, administrative staff manuals, and votes taken by members of an agency board.

In addition to releasing requested documents, agencies are bound to publish in advance the sort of files which are commonly requested.

Recently, two private citizens requested under the FOIA that the IRS release Donald Trump's tax returns to public scrutiny. While one can sympathize with their desire, since Trump is the first candidate since 1969 to not do so, the FOIA is unlikely to justify their release.  FIOA has nine possible exemptions, and one of them is relevant to this situation.  FIOA restricts and agency from publishing information which will invade another individual's personal privacy.  The FIOA also restricts the release of files which are; classified, interpersonal rules, prohibited by a different federal law, trade secrets or confidential financial information, privileged communication between agencies, information for law enforcement purposes, about the supervision of financial institutions, and geological information on wells.

The FIOA is the citizen's most useful tool for determining the actions of its government, and for evaluating how to proceed.

For this reason it is disturbing how President Obama and Secretary Clinton have avoided or circumvented the FIOA during their tenures.  According to PBS, “The Obama administration set a record again for censuring government files, or denying access to them last year,” under the FIOA. It denied requests which should have been accepted, it reduced employees who reply to requests, and it increased the backlog of requests. Of the roughly 700,000 requests, agencies replied to 650,000, and of these almost 460,000 either were censured, denied, or couldn't be located.

The press secretary pointed out that the White House had released data on “historical temperature charts, records of agricultural fertilizer consumption, Census data, fire deaths and college crime reports.”  These reports are the sort which are published in advance, but the true measure of transparency is releasing the documents which are not routine, those which may be embarrassing or important though not confidential.

As the election cycle nears its conclusion, the tale of Clinton's server and emails has become the singular issue which might cost her the presidency.  And while social media has become like a storm, raging with thunder and lighting, the issue has largely been about whether setting up the server was illegal because it was unsecured against foreign intrusion.  But from a public perspective, the most serious issue was how the server allowed Clinton to avoid the FOIA.

All @.gov emails are automatically archived for the purpose of retrieval internally, but also for FOIA requests. But Secretary Clinton used hdr22@clintonemail.com on a private server. Aside from the problem that her email handle looks like a high school students, her emails were not recorded.  Instead, she chose which emails to turn over, and which to delete. This violates the core of the FOIA act. Government officials on government servers don't get to choose which emails are relevant for recording. If they did, they would eliminate the very documents most likely to embarrass them, or illustrate their flaws.

In total she released 30,000 emails and deleted another 30,000 which she deemed to be personal. The FBI recently recovered an additional 15,000 emails which were work related, but not submitted with the first 30,000.  It's hard to imagine there is anything criminal in any of the emails, considering how careful (aside from this incident) Secretary Clinton has been, and also because the Supreme Court has made it nearly impossible to hold public officials accountable for corruption.  But the very act of picking and choosing which documents to share with the public violates the FOIA.

In any other season such a choice would be unwelcome.  But compared to a candidate who threatens the press with violence and condemnation, who won't release his tax returns, and who makes every effort to abandon his press entourage, Obama and Clinton seems truly transparent.