Open Government

For John, BLUF:  That transparency thing seems a promise unfulfilled.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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This post from the Blog of the Electronic Frontier Foundation seems a little over-wrought, but only a little. The post, by Mr David Greene, was posted 5 August 2014 and titled "UNSEALED: The US Sought Permission To Change The Historical Record Of A Public Court Proceeding".

A few weeks ago we fought a battle for transparency in our flagship NSA spying case, Jewel v. NSA.  But, ironically, we weren't able to tell you anything about it until now. On June 6, the court held a long hearing in Jewel in a crowded, open courtroom, widely covered by the press. We were even on the local TV news on two stations.  At the end, the Judge ordered both sides to request a transcript since he ordered us to do additional briefing. But when it was over, the government secretly, and surprisingly sought permission to “remove” classified information from the transcript, and even indicated that it wanted to do so secretly, so the public could never even know that they had done so.

The US Constitution is not a "suicide pact".  In the 1949 case of Terminiello v Chicago Associate Justice Robert Jackson wrote a dissent that was six times longer than the majority opinion.  In that dissent he said:

The choice is not between order and liberty.  It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either.  There is danger that, if the court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.

OK, we got that.  However, it is never good for freedom and democracy when a Government feels that there are certain things that the public cannot know.  It is the balancing act that is important and that is where the courts come into play.  They are the ones we trust to make sure Government secrecy does not move from necessity to fetish.

Regards  —  Cliff

NOTE:  Back in March, updated in May, Mr Ralph Nader had an article on Transparency today posted to The Huffington Post.