[Mb-civic] EDITORIAL The Costly Right to Know

[Michael Butler]

 The New York Times
February 2, 2005
EDITORIAL
The Costly Right to Know

Citizens who rate the Freedom of Information law as priceless had better
consider this: The Justice Department is demanding close to $400,000 from a
public interest foundation before honoring its request for information on a
lingering mystery of 9/11 - the secret numbers of immigrants who were
rounded up after the terrorist attacks and never heard from as their court
records were sealed. This huge tab, presented to the People for the American
Way Foundation, is well beyond established criteria and amounts to an insult
to the law's intent: letting citizens in on some of the murkier things the
government may be up to.

Justice officials insist that there is no easy way to provide the requested
information from scores of regional offices. The law provides for two free
hours of searching, but officials presented an estimated bill steeped in
Newtonian gibberish, if not outright stonewalling. Let's see, that's
13,314.25 hours at $28 an hour for $372,799, plus more expenses not yet
tabulated in other jurisdictions.

There are doubtlessly cheaper, simpler ways to find the extent to which the
government buried court proceedings after the immigrant dragnet. We doubt
that it would take that much time and labor if the White House were making
the request.

Basically, the group pursuing the information wants to know how many
requests the government made to seal proceedings and what rationales were
offered. Vital security information is not part of the request, just an
honest idea of government lawyers' resort to stealth.

It's hardly a secret that when national security is heightened, the values
of government accountability, an informed citizenry and robust journalism
can get short shrift. Close to a dozen reporters, for example, have been
served with subpoenas or threatened with jail sentences in the past year for
refusing to reveal confidential sources to federal investigators. It is
encouraging that two concerned members of the House Judiciary Committee,
Mike Pence, an Indiana Republican, and Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat,
have proposed a Free Flow of Information Act that would mandate guidelines
to rein in prosecutors. We agree strongly with Mr. Pence that journalists'
promises of confidentiality are essential to the flow of information the
public needs about its government.

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