We've written a few times here at The Daily Caveat about the growing hostility towards Freedom of Information Requests - an important tool for transparency in government and an indispensible one for your friendly neighborhood investigator. On a related point, Holly Manges Jones from The University of Pittsburgh School of Law's blog, The Jurist recently wrote about the rapid growth in classified government documents:

...15.6 million documents were classified by the US government in 2004, almost double the number from 2001, leading to a cost to taxpayers of $7.2 billion. At the same time, the declassification process, which makes historical documents available to the public, has slowed from 204 million pages in 1997 to approximately 28 million pages in 2004. The increased numbers are being criticized by politicians, including some conservatives, and traditional watchdog groups...

The disturbing numbers come from a recently released report (PDF) from the federal Information Security Oversight Office, a division of The Daily Caveat's former emloyer, the National Archives. The Jurist has a link to the report as well as as to a New York Times article with additional details.

-- MDT

Labels: FOIA