Suit Decries New Secrecy in Government

Suit Decries New Secrecy in Government
By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN, Associated Press Writer

Tuesday, December 6, 2005

(12-06) 14:26 PST WASHINGTON, (AP) --

Breaking a tradition of openness that began in 1816, the Bush administration has without explanation withheld the names and work locations of about 900,000 of its civilian workers, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

"Citizens have a right to know who is working for the government," said Adina Rosenbaum, attorney for the co-directors of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research group at Syracuse University, who sued under the Freedom of Information act to get the data.

Since 1989, TRAC has been posting on the Internet a database with the name, work location, salary and job category of all 2.7 million federal civilian workers except those in some law enforcement agencies. The data are often used by reporters and government watchdog groups to monitor policies and detect waste or abuse.

Recently, the Union of Concerned Scientists and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility used the database to identify and locate U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientists for a survey. Many of the scientists complained of political intervention into their research.
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/12/06/national/w142605S52.DTL

is presumptive to abound in such environment.

Birds of a feather...
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/society/A0861010.html

http://www.bushsecrecy.org/print_page.cfm?PagesID=15

When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Act into law on Independence Day, 1966, he said: "This legislation springs from one of our more essential principles: a democracy works best when the people have all the information that the security of the nation permits.

No one should be able to pull curtains of secrecy around decisions which can be revealed without injury to the public interest." President Johnson went on to instruct "every official in this Administration to cooperate to this end and to make information available to the full extent consistent with individual privacy and with the national interest."

Like the article reports, interested parties now have to ask the Pentagon directly-thus the "national security" shield can be used to protect criminals, torturers, rapists and other evil folks employed by the Bush administration.