Re: FOI under Ashcroft -- WASHINGTON BOARD

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Date Posted: 15:02:00 02/16/02 Sat
Author: Normal
Author Host/IP: modem26-361.mo-net.com / 12.110.237.122
Subject: Re: FOI under Ashcroft
In reply to: Donk 's message, "Re: FOI under Ashcroft" on 22:08:38 02/15/02 Fri

Found some interesting info at the aclu site.

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Free Information for Our Free Country
"A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy - or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."
- James Madison

An informed electorate "must stand ready to sound the alarm when necessary to point out the actions in any pernicious project."
- Alexander Hamilton

The ACLU has long argued that government secrecy about its operations endangers individual liberty. For example, in 1954 the government denied that lethal radiation had resulted from nuclear bomb tests in the South Pacific. News media that attempted to discover the truth about the tests ran into a wall of government silence. In response to this impasse, the ACLU commissioned a report, "The People's Right to Know: A Report on Government News Suppression" which urged that increased media access to government records was necessary to protect democracy. During the next decade, the ACLU continued its campaign to pass laws that would enable citizens to "know what their government is up to." The culmination of the fight was the passage of the Freedom of Information Act.

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was passed by Congress in 1966 and amended in 1974. Based on the premise argued by Madison and Hamilton that openness in government will assist citizens in making the informed choices necessary to a democracy, FOIA creates procedures whereby any member of the public may obtain the records of the agencies of the federal government. The purpose of this Guide is to help you exercise your right to "open agency action to the light of public scrutiny." This publication contains detailed information, instructions and sample letters designed to help you make an effective FOIA request. We hope that this step-by-step guide will serve you well, and we invite you to learn more about the ACLU and its mission to defend the Bill of Rights for all our nation's people.

We hope you will visit our website at http://www.aclu.org to see up-to the-moment information, news briefs and other resources on civil liberties issues. Or call ACLU Publications at (800) 775-ACLU for more information about other resources that may be of interest to you.

If you would like more information about the ACLU, including membership information, please write us at ACLU, 125 Broad Street, New York, NY 10004.

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