Posts tagged 'Exemption 3'
The Supreme Court giveth, the Justice Department taketh away
Posted: May 12, 2011 | Tags: Exemption 2, Exemption 3, Exemption 4, Exemption 6, Exemption 7, FOIA, Freedom of Information, Justice Department, Supreme Court
In March the Supreme Court rather bluntly told federal agencies and lower courts that they had been misinterpreting an exemption to the Freedom of Information Act for 30 years. Actually, the court could have said, in so many words, that folks should learn to read before they start saying what a law means.
The case involved a Washington man’s request for information about the blast radius of explosives stored on an island in Puget Sound. The Navy denied the request on grounds that the information could be withheld because of Exemption 2, which was designed, originally, to protect records ...
House hearing focuses on laws that keep information secret
Posted: March 18, 2011 | Tags: Collaboration on Government Secrecy, Daniel Metcalfe, Exemption 3, FOIA, Freedom of Information, House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Jennifer LaFleur, ProPublica, Rick Blum, Sunshine in Government Initiative
It was a busy week on the Freedom of Information front in Washington, as the annual observance of Sunshine Week unfolded, with hearings in the House and the Senate, as well as programs at the Newseum and elsewhere. We reported earlier on the Senate hearing.
Witnesses at the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform hearing focused on an aspect of FOIA that has become a more pronounced problem in recent years: A proliferation of laws that carve out special interest FOIA exemptions. Exemption 3 of the original FOIA law passed in 1966 permitted agencies to withhold records "specifically exempted ...
