An increase in denials of federal Public Information Act requests, supposedly because of national security concerns, demonstrates the need for an independent panel tasked with oversight and review of these denials to ensure that the exemption is not being abused.
As part of Sunshine Week, a national effort highlighting the importance of open government, The Associated Press looked at President Barack Obama's administration's record on complying with open records requests.
According to the AP, "government released all or portions of the information that citizens, journalists, businesses and others sought at about the same rate as the previous three years. It turned over all or parts of the records in about 65 percent of requests. It fully rejected more than one-third of requests, a slight increase over 2011, including cases when it couldn't find records, a person refused to pay for copies or the request was determined to be improper."
At the same time, last year the government cited national security to withhold information at least 5,223 times - a jump over 4,243 such cases in 2011 the AP reported. Agencies citing that exemption included intelligence agencies, but also the Office of Management and Budget, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Communications Commission and the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, the AP reported.
With no oversight or review possible, judges asked to weigh in on whether the records should be open are at a loss, according to the AP, which cited one New York case in which the judge wrote, "I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret."
Few people argue about the need to maintain national security, even if it means denying access to some records. But there needs to be some process in place in which a court or some independent panel can review the material in question if denial of the records is challenged.
Without a system of checks and balances, it is far too easy for government officials to hide behind the exemption of national security in denying access to records that, rightfully, should be released to the public.
