Salon.com > Secrecy

Government memo orders standards to root out whistleblowers

Tue, 28 May 2013 13:40:00 +0000

A New York Times Op-Ed from Eyal Press Monday highlighted a little-known but important government memo, which threatens the rights of whistleblowers. In line with this administration's unprecedented crackdown on government employees who blow the whistle, Eyal notes that the document, issued by the Obama administration in January, "instructs the director of national intelligence and the Office of Personnel Management to establish standards that would give federal agencies the power to fire employees, without appeal, deemed ineligible to hold 'noncritical sensitive' jobs." Whistlblower advocates see the memo as a means to restrict the options and rights of dissenting government workers. Press noted:

Journalists file suit against Manning trial secrecy

Fri, 24 May 2013 17:06:00 +0000

A group of journalists including Glenn Greenwald, Julian Assange, Amy Goodman and Kevin Gosztola -- all of whom have closely followed the Bradley Manning pretrial proceedings -- are filing suit to see the veil of fierce military secrecy lifted from the accused whistleblower's court martial.

The military judge presiding over the case can currently close a courtroom to the press and public for "security" reasons -- citing sensitive classified information. The plaintiffs are calling on the judge to grant public and press access to the historic trial and its attendant documents. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) has already had some success in having pretrial transcripts published, but for the most part public access to the proceedings has been provided in the form of rush transcripts compiled by dedicated independent journalist, Alexa O'Brien. Common Dreams reported on this week's filing:

In a complaint filed in a federal district court Wednesday by the Center for Constitutional Rights -- along with journalists Amy Goodman, Jeremy Scahill, Kevin Gosztola, Glenn Greenwald, Julian Assange, and Chase Madar -- the group of plaintiffs motioned for a preliminary injunction that would compel the judge to "grant the public and press access to the government’s filings, the court’s own orders, and transcripts of the proceedings." To date, none of these have been made available to the public.

Corporations accused of wrongdoing win battle to keep identities secret

Wed, 22 May 2013 16:53:00 +0000

If you look at the redacted decision a federal judge in the District Court of Maryland handed down last October, you would think it involves a classified CIA program, burying all pertinent information -- sometimes almost entire pages -- under black boxes.

But the case isn’t about a secret weapons program -- it’s about baby strollers or kitchen appliances or action figures or some other consumer product. But we don’t actually know because everything, from the name of the company involved to the product it makes, is secret, thanks to a potentially unprecedented court ruling that consumer advocates fear could set a standard of allowing corporations to challenge actions they don’t like without even revealing their names. Welcome to the “Company Doe” case.

In 2008, after a spate of high-profile recalls of lead-tainted toys from China and other products, Congress passed a law to beef up the Consumer Product Safety Commission, an independent federal agency that regulates everything from baby cribs to ATVs to swimming pools -- over 15,000 different products, altogether. The law also created a user-friendly online database aimed at making it easier for consumers to learn about potentially dangerous products by centralizing government reports and allowing any consumer to post his or her own complaints.

Are we less safe?

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 16:24:00 +0000

President Obama began his first term by pledging to bring an unprecedented level of transparency to government. Although he has done that in some areas, it has become apparent that his pledge came with an asterisk: in matters of national security policy, he has largely continued and even intensified his predecessor’s secretive practices.

But while the common justification for such conduct is the protection of Americans, there is much evidence that excessive secrecy actually harms national security.

First, it impedes information-sharing among government officials, and hampers effective coordination with our allies. It also cheapens the currency of secrecy, leading officials to exercise less care in their handling of classified information. And it results in unwise choices by executive officials who make key decisions about national security policy – for example, whether to go to war against Iraq – without the benefit of broad feedback and robust debate.

Transparency: “What difference does it make?”

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 23:09:00 +0000

Reactions to Hillary Clinton's fiery comments over Benghazi Wednesday fell lightning fast along partisan lines. Democrats celebrated the secretary of state's pointed response to the GOP's "angry men" (as our own Joan Walsh wrote); Republicans expressed outrage that Clinton seemed to say that it doesn't matter how Americans die.

Both responses miss the importance of Clinton's exclamation in the context of an administration characterized by a troubling aversion to transparency and accountability when it comes to U.S. action overseas. Before it sounds like I'm jumping on any right-wing bandwagons here, it's worth parsing what Clinton said and why it might matter.

Responding to questions over why the State Department's early narrative about the Benghazi attacks wrongly attributed the attacks to an anti-American protest, Clinton responded in exasperation:

Excuses for assassination secrecy

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 13:28:00 +0000

In response to his widely discussed Esquire article entitled "The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama," Tom Junod received a telephone call from someone he describes as "a person with intimate knowledge of the executive counter-terrorism policies of the Obama administration." This unnamed person called Junod specifically to defend the administration's refusal to provide any minimal transparency or even acknowledgment about these policies, even when drone attacks ordered by the President kill innocent American teenagers such as 16-year-old Abdulrahman Awlaki. Junod summarizes the defense he was given by this source as follows: