![]() Anyone who seeks information through the law is generally supposed to get it unless disclosure would hurt national security, violate personal privacy or expose business secrets or confidential decision-making in certain areas. government to turn over copies of federal records for zero or little cost. Under the records law, citizens and foreigners can compel the U.S. The government released the new figures in the days ahead of Sunshine Week, which ends Sunday, when news organizations promote open government and freedom of information. In the first full year after Obama’s election, that figure was only 65 percent of cases. Overall, in the final year of Obama’s administration, people who asked for records last year under the law received censored files or nothing in 77 percent of requests, about the same as the previous year. Trump’s secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, is traveling to Asia this week on a small plane without a contingent of journalists or a designated pool reporter who would send reports to the broader diplomatic press corps, departing from 50 years of practice. And Trump broke with tradition by refusing to disclose his tax returns. His administration has barred some mainstream news organizations from campaign rallies and one White House press briefing. In his private business and his presidential campaign, Trump required employees and advisers to sign non-disclosure agreements that barred them from discussing their work. Trump has not spoken extensively about transparency. It remains unclear how President Donald Trump’s administration will perform under the Freedom of Information Act or other measures of government transparency. So now the Republicans will have to decide their next move, whether it’s just more records requests or new efforts to tie the Obama administration’s hands in future appropriations bills. The White House under Obama routinely defended its efforts under the information law in recent years and said federal employees worked diligently on such requests for records. But HHS didn’t say exactly how it spent the money, and it didn’t lay out the kind of detail Republicans sought. That was higher by 142 such employees the previous year.Ī spokesman for former President Obama did not immediately respond to an email request for comment late Monday. It received a record 788,769 requests for files last year and spent a record $478 million answering them and employed 4,263 full-time FOIA employees across more than 100 federal departments and agencies. The figures reflect the final struggles of the Obama administration during the 2016 election to meet President Barack Obama’s pledge that it was “the most transparent administration in history,” despite wide recognition of serious problems coping with requests under the information law. The three departments accounted for more than half the government’s total records requests last year. Of the $36.2 million in legal costs fighting such lawsuits last year, the Justice Department accounted for $12 million, the Homeland Security Department for $6.3 million and the Pentagon for $4.8 million. The AP has pending lawsuits against the FBI for records about its decision to impersonate an AP journalist during a criminal investigation and about who helped the FBI hack into a mass shooting suspect’s iPhone and how much the government paid to do it.
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