Throughout the 1980s, Project Censored highlighted a number of alarming reductions to government access and accountability....It tracked the small but systematic changes made to existing laws and the executive orders introduced. It now appears that these actions may have been little more than a prelude to the virtual lock box against access that is being constructed around the current administration. “The Bush Administration has an obsession with secrecy,” says Representative Henry Waxman, the Democrat from California who, in September 2004, commissioned a congressional report on secrecy in the Bush Administration. “It has repeatedly rewritten laws and changed practices to reduce public and congressional scrutiny of its activities. The cumulative effect is an unprecedented assault on the laws that make our government open and accountable.”...Under the Bush Administration, agencies make extensive and arbitrary use of FOIA exemptions....Quite commonly, the Bush Administration simply fails to respond to FOIA requests at all....The Bush Administration has dramatically increased the volume of government information concealed from public view....The Bush Administration has also obtained unprecedented authority to conduct government operations in secret, with little or no judicial oversight....Compared to previous administrations, the Bush Administration has operated with remarkably little congressional oversight.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/01/2005 05:21:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
