Freedom of Information Act

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a 1967 in the United States came into force Act on Freedom of Information and gives everyone the right to demand access to documents from state authorities.

history

The law was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 4, 1966 , and went into effect a year later. The Johnson administration managed to water down the long-debated bill to such an extent that the bill had little practical effect. It was not until the 1974 amendment , passed in the wake of the Watergate affair , that the law became an effective instrument.

Mission statement and regulations

The law reflects the American model of an open government of a free state. The aim is to promote the transparency of state institutions. To this end, the public should be given comprehensive access to information and data collections. In principle, the public records have priority over the exception of secrecy. Administrative and judicial remedies are available to those who are denied access to the records .

Informational self-determination

This law on freedom of information is a good thing, especially in data protection , since, according to one thesis, only those who know what data are being collected from them in which context by government authorities can make use of their right to informational self-determination . In this way, misuse, which data protection is obliged to, can be prevented.

Disclosure Exceptions

The required records must be presented unless they fall under the protection of one or more of the exempted categories contained in the FOIA. Records that generally do not have to be made accessible are:

  • material legitimately kept secret
  • restricted types of purely internal matters
  • Matters protected from disclosure by other statutes
  • Commercial secrets or business or financial information that originate from an individual and is privileged or confidential
  • Internal communication of the branches from the deliberative process that takes place before decisions
  • Results of the work of lawyers or records of their clients
  • Information that clearly an unjustified intrusion into the personal privacy would constitute
  • Records that law enforcement to the extent that one in six specific damages could be caused by disclosure
  • Investigations at credit institutions

Implementation in other countries

In addition to the United States, the UK government also passed a Freedom of Information Act in 2000 . In 2002, Germany made the first attempts to articulate a German Freedom of Information Act with a draft , which was passed in September 2005 and came into force on January 1, 2006.

Glomar answer

"Agencies sometimes refuse to confirm or deny whether responive records do or do not exist on the grounds that acknowledging their very existence itself would reveal secret information."

"The authorities sometimes neither confirm nor deny the existence of records because the very admission of the very existence of these records would reveal secret information."

The journalist Harriet Ann Phillippi , citing the Freedom of Information Act, applied for access to the documents relating to the then-secret Azorian project , which was supposed to lift a Soviet submarine with the help of the recovery ship Hughes Glomar Explorer . Rejecting the request, the authorities said they could neither confirm nor deny anything to do with the Glomar Explorer. Referring to this occurrence, the term glomar response or glomarize is used when government authorities declare an issue that they can neither confirm nor deny it. In a legal dispute in 1976, Phillippi got the right to inspect the files, although in March 1975 by Jack Anderson and Seymour Hersh a large part of the project had been uncovered and was known to the public.

The Glomar response has been used increasingly by United States government officials since 2001 to block FOIA requests. The courts increasingly accepted the objections of the authorities, since the protection of secrets in the war on terror should often be seen as a priority over informing the population.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Who can make FOIA inquiries? Every person, whether a citizen or not ( memento of the original dated September 6, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.foia.gov
  2. ↑ a b c d Alexander Grenz: Data protection in Europe and the USA: A comparative law study with special consideration of the Safe Harbor solution (DuD specialist articles) . 1st edition. Deutscher Universitäts-Verlag / GWV Fachverlag, Wiesbaden 2004, ISBN 3-8244-2185-2 , p. 52 f . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  3. ↑ US Department of Justice: FOIA Update: The Freedom of Information Act, 5 USC sect. 552, As Amended By Public Law No. 104-231, 110 stat. 3048. united State Department of justice, January 1, 1996, accessed on May 19, 2015 (English, text with explanations and exceptions to the "Freedom of Information Act").
  4. ^ Q. Ashton Acton: Issues in Law Research 2011 Edition . Volume 12, 1834. ScholarlyEditions, Atlanta GA 2012, ISBN 978-1-4649-6684-2 , pp. 143 (English, limited preview in Google Book search).
  5. ^ Matthew Aid, William Burr, Thomas Blanton: Project Azorian The CIA's Declassified History of the Glomar Explorer. National Security Archive, February 12, 2010, accessed on May 19, 2015 (English, infobox): "Glomarization - The name of the CIA ship Hughes Glomar Explorer is infamous in the world of FOIA requesting and litigation. In the wake of the exposés on the Glomar Explorer by Jack Anderson and Seymour Hersh, journalist Harriet Ann Phillippi filed a FOIA request asking for documents on the Agency's attempts to discourage reporting on the CIA's salvaging project. Rejecting Phillippi's request, the Agency declared that it could 'neither confirm nor deny' its connection with the Glomar Explorer. Phillippi filed a lawsuit, but the US District Court of Appeals upheld the CIA's position in 1976. Since the Phillippi v CIA decision, the term 'glomarize' or 'glomar response' have become terms of art to describe the circumstances when the CIA or other Agencies claim that they can "neither confirm nor deny" the existence of requested documents. No doubt the CIA will continue to make "Glomar" responses to some declassification requests, but in light of this new release, it is unlikely to 'glomarize' the Glomar Explorer. "
  6. ^ Greg Martin, Rebecca S. Bray, Miiko Kumar: Secrecy, Law and Society . Volume 12, 1834. Routledge, New York 2015, ISBN 978-1-138-82685-4 , pp. 50 f . (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).