PROMISES, PROMISES: Obama keeps some Bush secrets
WASHINGTON (AP) - Despite a pledge to open government, the Obama administration has endorsed a Bush-era decision to keep secret key details of an FBI computer database that allows agents and analysts to search a billion documents with a wealth of personal information about Americans and foreigners.
President Barack Obama's Justice Department quietly told a federal court in Washington last week that it would not second-guess the previous administration's decisions to withhold some information about the bureau's Investigative Data Warehouse.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group, had sued under the Freedom of Information Act to get records showing how the FBI protects the privacy of Americans whose personal information winds up in the vast database.
As a result, there is no public list of all the databases the FBI sucks into this computer warehouse; no information on how individuals can correct errors about them in this FBI database; and no public access to assessments the bureau did of the warehouse's impact on Americans' privacy. (excerpt) read more at breitbart.com.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Candidate Obama: secrets bad. President Obama: secrets good.
The FBI has a huge database collected from many sources. We don't know what is in it because President Bush made the contents secret. President Obama ran on a promise for open government. He has decided he wants to keep the FBI database secret too.
His record on secrecy is disappointing but still a vast improvement over Bush. We need a lot more transparency before we clean the crooks out of Washington.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. I am hoping as he gains experience and clout, Obama will gravitate more towards his campaign promises and futher away from the Washington establishment.
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