Government Receives Poor Grades on Secrecy

Government secrecy continues to expand across a broad array of agencies and actions, according to a new report from OpenTheGovernment.org. The Secrecy Report Card 2006 is the third of its kind produced annually, reviewing numerous indicators to identify trends in public access to information.

Featuring prominently in this year's report card are a number of troubling signs of growing government secrecy:

  • In 2005, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved all 2,072 requests for secret surveillance orders made by U.S. intelligence agencies, rejecting none.
  • In 2005, "black" programs accounted for 17 percent of the Defense Department acquisition budget of $315.5 billion. Classified acquisition funding has nearly doubled in real terms since FY 1995, when funding for these programs reached its post-Cold War low.
  • President George W. Bush has issued 132 signing statements challenging over 810 provisions of federal laws. In the 211 years of our nation's history preceding 2000, presidents issued fewer than 600 signing statements that took issue with the bills they signed.
  • For every one dollar the government spent on declassifying documents, the government spent $134 maintaining the secrets already on the books. To put this number in context, from 1997-2001, the government spent less than $25 per year keeping secrets for every dollar spent declassifying them.

In a statement accompanying the report, Patrice McDermott, director of OpenTheGovernment.org and co-author of the report explained, "Every administration wants to control information about its policies and practices but the current administration has restricted access to information about our government and its policies at unprecedented levels. The result has been the suppression of discussions about our country's direction and its security. How can the public or even Congress make informed decisions under such circumstances? The movement away from public accountability must be reversed."

Several bills currently making their way through Congress counteract this trend toward secrecy, fostering transparency and accountability. For example, language inserted in HR 5441, the 2007 Department of Homeland Security Appropriations bill, would curtail the growth of "sensitive security information," a type of "sensitive but unclassified" information (SBU). SBU designations are used to keep unclassified information hidden from the public. The Secrecy Report Card 2006 identifies 50 SBU designations, but acknowledges the existence of more than 60 designations.

Other legislation highlighted by the report card includes the "Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act," (HR 5060, S 2590) legislation to require the administration to establish an online, searchable database for grants and contracts, which was agreed to by the Senate late last week and is expected to pass in the House this week.

Another bill, H. Res 688, would require the House to make the text of legislation and conference reports publicly available online for 72 hours before it is voted on.

Openness allows citizens and lawmakers to make informed decisions and in this way helps ensure a fully functioning democracy. As the report states, "Openness is not only a keystone value of our democracy, more practically it helps root out abuse of power, bad decisions or embarrassing facts that may put lives at risk."

OpenTheGovernment.org is a coalition of journalists, consumer and good government groups, environmentalists, library groups, labor and others united to make the federal government a more open place in order to make us safer, strengthen public trust in government, and support our democratic principles. OpenTheGovernment.org is co-chaired by OMB Watch's executive director Gary Bass.

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