MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES
SUBJECT: Freedom of Information Act
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The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears. Nondisclosure should never be based on an effort to protect the personal interests of Government officials at the expense of those they are supposed to serve. In responding to requests under the FOIA, executive branch agencies (agencies) should act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing that such agencies are servants of the public.
All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open Government. The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.
The presumption of disclosure also means that agencies should take affirmative steps to make information public. They should not wait for specific requests from the public. All agencies should use modern technology to inform citizens about what is known and done by their Government. Disclosure should be timely.
I direct the Attorney General to issue new guidelines governing the FOIA to the heads of executive departments and agencies, reaffirming the commitment to accountability and transparency, and to publish such guidelines in the Federal Register.
Speaking as a scientist, free flowing information is the picture of pure beauty.
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama moved to reshape U.S. international policy Thursday, ordering the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison camp closed within a year and naming new envoys to the Middle East and Afghanistan-Pakistan.
“We have no time to lose,” he said as he welcomed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to help forge what he called “a new era of American leadership” in the world.
It was a day in which Mr. Obama sought to reverse some of the most contentious policies of his predecessor.
“I can say without exception or equivocation that the United States will not torture,” he said in a visit to the State Department on his second full day in office.
GENEVA — Former detainees, human-rights advocates and government officials around the world welcomed President Barack Obama’s decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention centre, saying Thursday it helped restore their faith in the United States.
The UN’s torture investigator, Manfred Nowak, said news that Mr. Obama will order the prison closed, review military trials of terror suspects and end harsh interrogations was a sign of goodwill by the new American administration. But he warned that shutting the prison will require difficult decisions and said freed inmates should be allowed to sue the United States if they were mistreated.
“Justice also means to look into the past,” Mr. Nowak told The Associated Press. Mr. Nowak, an Austrian law professor, has previously said he had reliable accounts to indicate that Guantanamo detainees have been tortured.
Pentagon official Susan Crawford told The Washington Post in an interview published last week that the United States tortured one inmate, a Saudi named Mohammed al-Qahtani, in 2002. She was the first senior Bush administration official to make such a statement.
We are emerging from the Dark Ages into the light.
Apple Inc. is now selling the vast majority of its digital songs without copy-protection software.
The maker of the iPod also announced Tuesday a deal to roll out variable pricing on songs from the iTunes Music Store, with prices between $0.76 and $1.29 U.S. .
Apple announced the changes at the Macworld Expo trade show in San Francisco Tuesday.
Copy-protection software, also known as digital-rights management or DRM, has proved a controversial topic with music fans and record labels alike. Eight million of iTunes s 10 million songs will be available without DRM.
The software was designed to prevent fans from illegally sharing digital downloads on file-sharing services. But it also prevented many fans from moving their own songs between devices and became increasingly unpopular.
Apple’s founder, Steve Jobs, publicly called on major record labels to drop DRM in February, 2007.
In exchange, labels have been asking that iTunes agree to sell songs at variable prices. Currently, iTunes sells all individual songs at 99 cents regardless of their popularity or date of release, unlike most other retail outlets.
A prominent Iranian-Canadian blogger has been detained and his case is being investigated, Iran’s judiciary said on Tuesday in the first official public confirmation about his whereabouts.
Hossein Derakhshan, nicknamed the “Blogfather” for his role in pioneering a blogging revolution in Iran, last updated his blog in October and Canadian media reports, quoting a friend, said he was detained on Nov. 1 during a visit to Iran.
Mr. Derakhshan was being held on charges of spying for Israel, a country the Islamic Republic does not recognize, according to Canadian media.
“His case is in a preliminary investigative stage at a revolutionary court and he is currently in incarceration in a jail in Tehran,” judiciary spokesman Alireza Jamshidi told a news conference when asked about Mr. Derakhshan’s case.
Revolutionary courts handle national security cases.
The spokesman did not give further details.
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Mr. Derakhshan, 33, was a journalist in Tehran before moving to Toronto in 2000. He made his name by publishing instructions on how to use blogging software to publish blogs in Farsi, sparking an explosion of blogging in the Iranian language.
Please keep him in your hopes, prayers, thoughts, et al. This man should be receiving a Nobel Peace Prize, but emancipation would be a good start … information about how you can become active and more regarding the story is available at freehoder.com
U.S. President George W Bush is attacked by an Iraqi reporter with a shoe.
Here’s the obligatory “Bush attacked by man with shoe” post. Reviewing the comments, I can sum up three key perspectives that were expressed by different viewers:
1) Bush is a ninja, and matrixed out of the way
2) Arabs are animals, disrespectful of US troops, and deserve to be nuked once they’ve been liberated
3) If only the shoe hit him, but it was epic lulz nevertheless
And now for my perspective: the reporter who threw the shoe displayed a remarkable amount of respect by using a deeply personal, culturally significant expression of profound disgust. Bush has made a major impact on the region, and people seem to care about expressing their opinions to him. In short, mission accomplished; the Iraqi people have officially been liberated!
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