The Freedom of Information Act is routinely employed by the media to obtain sensitive data from the government. The hitherto unadvertised, additional vetting procedures were designed to, if not hamstring the FOIA, certainly to lame it. But the media is not the only target. The additional review process can even delay Congress. What is most significant is that the report specifically states that “…White House involvement was responsible in several cases for adding a significant processing delay…” Not Cincinnati, not the FBI or NSA. The White House.
Dan Epstein, found this hypocritical behavior “heavily ironic in the realm of transparency … It would seem to repudiate this notion that this is going to be the most transparent government in history…”
It would and does.
Image: From geograph.org.uk; author: Adam Ward; Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license