From the article:

When I started covering crime as a reporter for small newspapers in the 1980s, I was assigned to walk to the police department lobby each morning and look through all of the previous day’s police reports, clipped to a board on the counter, containing all the details laid out for anyone to see. We were able to report to the community each day on the major events in town – to explain why people heard sirens, or saw a smoke plume.

By the 1990s, the clipboards were moved out of the lobby, so we asked at the counter to see them. Then we were told we had to review them with the sergeant on duty. Then we were told we couldn’t see them – we had to ask the police what they felt was newsworthy. Then we were told to submit a public records request, and wait for days or weeks – if we got them at all.

For decades, journalists and civic activists have lamented the increasing secrecy of government – the times, they were denied government information, particularly from public records requests. Reports have shown secrecy getting worse at the federal, state and local government levels.

But those were usually anecdotal reports of problems. Now, there is data that brings those refusals into focus and which provides a fuller picture of government agencies hiding their work from the public they ostensibly serve.

Openness benefits people and society

The stakes, and potential ramifications for everyday people, are significant.

Access to government records helps people research their family history, identify quality schools for their children, monitor the cleanliness of their drinking water, background-check their online dates, and hold their local town officials accountable.

And there are clear benefits: Open records are proven to lead to less sex-offender recidivism, fewer food service complaints, increased trust in government institutions and reduced corruption.

Stanford University professor James Hamilton calculated that for every dollar spent by newspapers on public records-based journalism, society realizes benefits worth US$287 in lower taxes and saved lives.

Less transparency year after year

My analysis of government agencies’ compliance with public records laws through 37,000 federal Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, requests submitted through the nonprofit MuckRock.com shows that a decade ago, if you asked the federal government for a public record, you might get it about half the time – which isn’t great. Today, you might get it about 12% of the time, and the trend is steadily downward.

The trend is similar though less uniform among state and local governments: You might receive what you ask for two-thirds of the time in Idaho or Washington state, but only 10% of the time in Alabama.

Every year in mid-March, since 2005, national Sunshine Week has promoted the right of people to acquire public records and attend public meetings. The Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida, where I am the director, has conducted research and education about access to government information for nearly 50 years.

Our research indicates that U.S. government secrecy has never been so prevalent.

Increasing secrecy isn’t tied to any particular president or regime. The administration of President Barack Obama, who declared on his first day of office his intent to be the most transparent president in history, was slower to respond and less likely to release information than George W. Bush’s administration.

President Donald Trump’s administration was more secretive than Obama’s, and transparency continues to slide under the Biden administration.

Data tells a piece of the story

According to annual data collected by the U.S. Department of Justice, federal agencies have become more secretive over the past decade:

• The prevalence of people getting what they asked for through FOIA requests declined from 38% of the time in 2010 to 17% in 2022.

• In 2010, about 13% of the time, federal agencies would reply to FOIA requests by saying they couldn’t find records pertaining to the request. By 2022, the rate of that type of response had increased to 21%, which officials often attributed to outdated record management systems incapable of keeping up with the massive amounts of electronic records, particularly emails.

• Backlogs, where requests languish beyond the 20-day legal requirement for completion, have nearly doubled since 2010, from 12% of total requests to 22%. The average number of days it takes to process simple requests, which require little staff time and a smaller volume of records, has doubled since 2014, from 21 days to 41 days, according to Justice Department reports.

• While some secrecy is necessary to protect national security, the Government Accountability Office reported that the use of FOIA Exemption (b)(3), which allows federal agencies to deny records if another law makes the information secret, has more than doubled during the past decade, even though the number of requests only increased by a third. That includes denying people’s requests about properly withheld intelligence information. But it also includes refusing to release information on topics of great public interest, such as defective consumer products and employment discrimination cases.

Even if agencies grant requests, they present other obstacles. A.Jay Wagner of Marquette University and I surveyed 330 people who requested records in the U.S., finding that high fees to copy documents discourage people, such as journalists, nonprofits and members of the public, from seeking information in the public interest. And some agencies’ public information officers obstruct public access to information. They limit access to the people and documents most important for government transparency and accountability.

Research-based solutions

Just as researchers have identified secrecy spreading through the government, recent studies offer ideas for possible cures.

Independent oversight offices with enforcement power, such as in Connecticut, Ohio, Pennsylvania and more than 80 nations, provide private citizens an alternative to litigation. Instead of having to hire a lawyer to sue the government for what you are entitled to, the independent agencies will review your case, make a determination and force the government to provide you the information.

The federal FOIA Advisory Committee, working since 2014, has provided 52 recommendations for Congress and federal agencies to improve transparency in the United States, crafted from experts and researchers. A subcommittee I co-chair for the current term is close to finishing its assessment of how well the recommendations have been implemented, with results to be released in May 2024. Our preliminary assessment indicates that there is a lot of work left to do, and that Congress and government agencies have ignored many of the recommendations.

I'm trying to get a FOIA request for records on the FBI surveillance that my CPUSA D.O. (district organizer) got during the 2000s and up till the 2010s, I believe, never mind a bunch of other encounters with 'em.

But this does not bode well for... anyone, really.

Is there any way we can stop this? Or stem the tide?

Ideas, please.

cross-posted from: https://lemy.lol/post/22095695

Well, at least I found the one good Tweet on Twitter lol

I kid, I kid.

But yeah, I don't think Prashad has gone for Slavoj Žižek before and certainly not in this manner.

Lots of attention.

I'll stop posting Tweets lol but I thought you might find it interesting how much attention this Tweet got.

The Empire Can No Longer Hide the Genocide of Palestine

On February 25, 2024, after over four months of ceaseless genocidal attacks on Palestine, a uniformed soldier self-immolated in front of the embassy of the zionist entity in Washington D.C., in the heart of the U.S. Empire. In protest of the U.S.-backed genocidal campaign against Palestinians, Aaron Bushnell livestreamed his sacrifice. He would  “no longer be complicit in genocide.”

In December 2023, another protestor self-immolated at the zionist entity’s consulate in Atlanta. News of this act was so successfully suppressed that even the name of the protester is not publicly known. Meanwhile, Aaron’s act spread quickly on Twitter. His name reached the number one trending topic on Twitter in the United States, with more than 1.03 million posts. We can attribute this to, as one Clarion article states, “the democratization of media through hand held television studios.” For weeks, all across the globe, images of his martyrdom have appeared at protests against the Palestinian genocide. Even a street in Palestine was named in his honor.

Aaron’s sacrifice is just one of many in a long list of acts that have been broadcast in this way since the heroic resistance attacks of October 7. The ability for anyone with a phone to both access and create media is making this round of zionist aggression unique, as far as western audiences are concerned. For the first time, people in the western world are seeing first hand the horror of the zionist aggression. The western media acts as a sieve for colonial violence. Now, the veil has been torn asunder. Western audiences can no longer pretend to be innocent bystanders, the role of the west has been made plain to all.

It began with the valiant acts of the Palestinian resistance fighters themselves on October 7. Their commandos used GoPro cameras to record their prison break and hostage capture. The videos spread quickly on social media, particularly through Telegram channels like Resistance News Network that share updates from various Palestinian resistance organizations. While footage from the frontlines has been available before, the social networks distributing the flurry of direct updates were made much more popular during the 2021 aggression on Sheikh Jarrah and Gaza. This is the first time that audiences in the western world, on a mass scale, were able to directly witness the actions of the resistance, uncensored and unaltered. 

As the record of atrocities becomes more complete, the imperial citizenry, those of us comfortable in the heart of U.S. Empire, are forced to grapple with the consequences of U.S. hegemony. Not only that, but the record remains to refute the lies that Empire inevitably spins. This cataloging proved immensely useful once zionist propaganda began to spin regarding the events of October 7. From accusing Hamas of committing massacres and rapes at the Nova music festival and in the kibbutzim, to showing sensational images of bombed out houses, a graveyard of cars, and charred babies, the zionist propaganda industry, also known as hasbara, spun many a tale around Palestinian capabilities. Video proof grassroots-televised across the globe showed that the Palestinian militants were equipped with rifles and rocket launchers; tools that are physically incapable of producing the carnage the zionist entity alleges. In fact, video from the zionist entity itself showed zionist Apache helicopters bombing indiscriminately at those fleeing from the music festival. This is the so-called “Hannibal Directive,” a standing order to zionist forces to prevent settlers from being taken hostage even if it means killing them. The deranged zionist political caste refuses to be pressured by their constituents, so they take every opportunity to remove sources of pressure: like hostages.

The impact of on the ground footage achieved new heights on November 2, 2023, when the Al Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, released a now-iconic video.  The video depicts a resistance fighter hiding in the bushes. They single-handedly run up to a Merkava tank, place an explosive under its missile defense system, and destroy it. We witness them sprint back to their hiding spot; their comrade hands them a rocket propelled grenade launcher. We are with them by video as they fire the rocket, demolishing the zionist war machine, and we crawl into a tunnel by their side, all through the magic of video. This video made the house style of Al Qassam videos recognizable across the internet. The brigade’s film techniques — using upside-down red triangles to pinpoint targets, zooming in on areas of focus, reversing the video at key moments and freezing the frame on the impact of explosions — clarifies the chaotic footage and captures the fighters’ bravery. These techniques allow anyone to appreciate the resistance fighters’ feats, without needing to understand military technology or military videography. In the following months, numerous videos would be released by Al Qassam and Suraya al Quds (the armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad), broadcasting to the world the incredible operations conducted by these fearless commandos. “The colonized man liberates himself in and through violence,” said Frantz Fanon — now the world has a front row seat to these heroic acts of liberation. 

Another key media victory for the Palestinian resistance occurred between November 24 and November 30, 2023, during the temporary ceasefire and hostage exchange. The resistance released videos each day of the ceasefire showcasing the safe transfer of hostages. In most of these videos, the released hostages were friendly with their Palestinian captors. We saw greetings, well wishes, and even handshakes. Released hostages spoke of sharing meals, Palestinian women aiding the hostage women, and being shielded from zionist airstrikes by the Palestinian militants’ own bodies. These videos show the humanity of the Palestinian militants — in direct contradiction to the zionist lie of Palestinians as subhuman or hate-filled barbarians. As Fanon observed: “The ‘native’ is declared impervious to ethics, representing not only the absence of values but also the negation of values. He is, dare we say it, the enemy of values. In other words, absolute evil.” Meanwhile, Palestinian hostages released by the occupation consistently showed signs of having been physically and psychologically tortured. Many Palestinian prisoners have shared harrowing tales of the suffering they endured in zionist prisons. Just as Aimé Césaire warned us, it is imperialism that makes the barbarian of the occupier.

And what does the occupier do with this fantastic advance of technology? Zionist soldiers frequently and proudly publish video evidence of their cowardice and barbarism. Zionist clips demonstrate their inept soldiers unloading bullets into walls and furniture. We see the cowardly colonizers also attempted to steal Hamas’ upside down red triangle identifier, which has become a symbol of the resistance, by replacing the triangle with a star of David. What else do the zionist videos show us? Tanks searing a star of David over ruins in Gaza. The zionists’ published videos of a traveling D.J. performing concerts over Gazan ruins. To truly capture their inhumanity, they also put out videos showing their “soldiers” ransacking stores in Gaza and crushing food that is desperately needed by the Palestinians who have been denied humanitarian aid by the occupation. Aside from reveling in their carnage, the zionist occupying army (IOF) also released videos of their exploration of Al Shifa hospital, a site they claimed hosted a Hamas headquarters. The released videos provided no evidence for any of the claimed activity, despite the numerous human rights violations conducted to gain access to this hospital. In fact, the video has the air of a comedy skit — the zionist I Think You Should Leave —  rather than a serious attempt at journalism.

The hospital videos are not the only example of hasbara that feels too bizarre to be real. On November 14, 2023 the official Twitter account of the zionist entity shared a video, speaking about the struggle of Shaylee Atary, the wife of a zionist soldier who was killed by the resistance. Atary was seeking to retrieve her husband’s sperm so that she can still procreate with his genetic code. This post was the first exposure for many viewers around the world to the established zionist practice of sperm retrieval from the dead to ensure procreation and genetic purity. One would be forgiven for mistaking this for a practice originating from Nazi Germany. 

On the zionist entity’s social media and on their personal channels, zionist soldiers have created a sick new subgenre of media: gloating photos of themselves as they pose with women’s lingerie ransacked from their victims’ abandoned homes in Gaza. One of the main propaganda talking points to emerge after October 7 was that Hamas militants went on a raping rampage, both in official media and in zionists taking to social media to share leering stories that compete for increasingly cruel detail. But the talking point is unraveling. As the writing of this article, the New York Times is investigating the ties to the IOF of one of the authors from their piece regarding these alleged rapes. Yet it is the zionists who extensively document their sexual crimes.

The media war is not only being conducted by combatants, but also by civilians. Endless videos have been released documenting Palestinian suffering. The world has witnessed horrific scenes from murdered babies in incubators and children starving to death. Countless parents have hugged the bodies of their slain children, and countless more have been left with no body to hold. In one video, the world looks on as a father carries the severed remains of his children in plastic bags. These painful videos continue to be released because a core aspect of zionism is erasing and denying the existence of the Palestinian people. Proof of Palestinian suffering is the most acute evidence that the Palestinian people endure. As Somdeep Sen stated in his study on Palestinian resistance, “The act of resistance is called a Palestinian act of resistance, and the injuries and deaths that follow become instances of Palestinian suffering. As a result, Palestine is recognizable in a way that compels one to declare, “Palestine exists,” despite the settler claiming otherwise.” So, we do not only see the bloodshed up close. We also see that the Palestinian people cannot even suffer and mourn in private, they know they must record their suffering so that the world knows they exist and will continue to exist. 

While Palestinians are focused on surviving and documenting their suffering for the world to see, the zionist settlers have spent this time showing the world their depravity. Since this phase of the conflict began, zionist settlers have produced numerous trends on TikTok where they dress as Palestinians and dance and sing about losing their homes, mocking the fate of the people they colonize. Since at least February 2024, zionist settlers have been protesting at Gaza’s crossings, blocking the path of trucks trying to enter Palestine with humanitarian aid. They proudly depict themselves doing this because, as settlers, they play a key role in colonization and in this genocide. A poll from January 2024 shows that 94.2% of zionist settlers believe the IOF is using an appropriate amount of force or too little force in regards to the genocide they are enacting. Screenshots of zionist Telegram chats depict settlers laughing at the suffering of Palestinians and urging for more brutality. The role of zionist settlers in this genocide cannot be overstated, despite the common western claim that these settlers are merely “civilians” or somehow innocent of the crimes of its government.

Supporters outside of Palestine also play their role on the media front. Hezbollah has been documenting their targeted strikes at zionist reconnaissance infrastructure, even attaching cameras to rockets so viewers can go on the journey themselves. Yemen has taken up an immense role in the conflict by threatening, and attacking, zionist-aligned ships in the Bab el Mandab Strait. On November 19, 2023 Yemen recorded their soldiers boarding the ship Galaxy Leader, commandeering it and diverting it back towards Yemen. The ship has since become a tourist destination for Yemenis, who can walk on its deck and take photos. In January, 2024 a young Yemeni man’s videos aboard the Galaxy Leader gained viral attention on TikTok for his handsome appearance and familiar selfie style. Viewers everywhere would soon hear the unfiltered perspective of this resistance supporter, Rashid Al Haddad, in podcast interviews translated into multiple languages.

While Palestinian supporters across the globe protest in solidarity, enraged and heartbroken by the ethnic cleansing they witness firsthand, zionists protest by putting red paint on their pants, trying to create an image of a raped woman, trying to shock onlookers with manufactured perversion in vain hope it can overcome the flood of footage that testifies against them. This genocide has been televised, to everyone, from all angles. There has been such an abundance of inhumanity proudly recorded by settlers and the IOF that South Africa could bring their case against the zionist entity to the International Court of Justice using social media videos as evidence. 

The sacrifice of Aaron Bushnell is just one recent event of this media war. The fall of the zionist entity is being televised for all to see, but the media war is even more damning for those in the western world. For more than 75 years they played ignorant, burying their heads in the sand. Now, the sand has washed away and their heads are bare and free — free to witness the slaughter done in their name. No longer can they turn away, as their eyes are forever opened to genocide. “Yes,” wrote Fanon, “everyone must be involved in the struggle for the sake of the common salvation. There are no clean hands, no innocent spectators. We are all in the process of dirtying our hands in the quagmire of our soil and the terrifying void of our minds. Any spectator is a coward or a traitor.” The people in the so-called “free world” have been condemned. History is condemning them, and offers only two paths: they must either rise and fight this genocide with every fiber of their being, or remain cowards and traitors to humanity. This is what makes Bushnell’s protest impactful to western audiences. He recognized his complicity and active participation in the genocide and decided that he would no longer be a coward and a traitor. The question now is: what will the millions who have witnessed his death do?