Only 17 days until FOIA turns 43 years of age.
FOIA has been used by the reporters and investigators for decades. In some instances, this has resulted in the headlines you’ve seen in your local papers and now carries forward to be seen on the cable news networks. George Washington University’s “The National Security Archive” is a great repository of such FOIA based news items. For instance, here are some samples from their 2001 list:
#2. “NASA mistakes, optimism cost taxpayers billions,” Florida Today, 15 June 2001.
#9. “Ritalin prescribed unevenly in U.S.,”
#12. “For VIP’s brother, fish are biting at a tiny lake; State supplies big trout to region where department chief grew up,” San Francisco Chronicle, 2 April 2001.
Another source of where data can be found showing how the use of FOIA has provided important information about government activities is the First Amendment Center. From that page the “Significant FOIA victories” section:
* After being sued by the National Veterans Task Force on Agent Orange, the Air Force released a history of its use of herbicides during the Vietnam War, allowing researchers to determine which U.S. troops had been sprayed.
* Responding to numerous FOIA requests, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released papers over the years about its 1950s-’60s COINTELPRO program, in which it infiltrated leftist antiwar and civil rights groups as well as the women’s movement to monitor and sabotage their activities. In 2002, after a 17-year FOIA legal battle, the FBI was forced to turn over the details of its unlawful intelligence activities at the University of California during that period.
* In 1982, The Kansas City Times acquired Department of Agriculture papers showing that although a large percentage of meat packing plants failed to meet the department’s standards, its inspectors routinely gave them satisfactory reports and approved contaminated meat.
* In 2000, environmental groups obtained records from the Food and Drug Administration that showed it was failing to control the levels of mercury in fish even though its own tests showed them to be too high. By 2001, the FDA had warned pregnant women against consuming shark, swordfish and mackerel. However, it failed to include mercury-rich tuna. Another FOIA request, this time by the Environmental Working Group, revealed that the FDA had come under intense pressure from the tuna industry to exclude tuna from the warning.
* The Department of Transportation was forced to release a videotape of crash-test dummies flying out the rear of Chrysler-made minivans on impact, owing to a defect that had contributed to numerous deaths and injuries between 1984 and1995.
* The Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal filed FOIA requests to get Department of Energy maps showing radioactive and chemical hazards around the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, which had long made uranium for nuclear weapons. The maps, released in 2000, showed the levels of plutonium contamination to be much higher than the government had admitted.
If anyone is sitting out there and thinking that FOIA does not matter to them, a look at the above information may change their minds.
The Freedom of Information Act is not always easy to use. In many cases these documents and the information they contain, were not released until the person/agency making the request went through the court system. Sometimes, that trek went all the way to the Supreme Court.
It is the right of people to know what their government, whether national, state, or local is doing. It is the right of people to know how their tax money is spent, what steps are being taken to provide for the health, safety, and well-being of citizens. It is the right of people to know not only the successes of government, but the failings as well.
I will close with this quote from the Carter Center that gives a slightly different perspective in its last two sentences. http://cartercenter.org/peace/americas/nav_question4.html
“Access to public records gives citizens the opportunity to participate in public life, help set priorities, and hold their governments accountable. A free flow of information can be an important tool for building trust between a government and its citizens. It also improves communication within government to make the public administration more efficient and more effective in delivering services to its constituency. But, perhaps most importantly, access to information is a fundamental human right and can be used to help people exercise other critical human rights, such as clean water, healthcare, and education. Access to information has been more recently recognized as an instrument that can be utilized to fight poverty in developing nations.”
Thats right! Don’t be afraid to speak your mind. This is the 21st century, right?