Report is critical of president
on autocratic secrecy powers 
The American Civil Liberties Union is chastising the Obama administration's record on transparency versus excessive secrecy.
www.aclu.org/files/assets/secrecyreport_20110727.pdf

In the report, "Drastic Measures Required: Congress Needs to Overhaul Secrecy Laws and Increase Oversight of the Secret Security Establishment," the rights lobby chides President Obama for his "mixed record" on secrecy issues and accuses him of authoritarian, anti-democratic behavior on a number of points.

Charging that "reality has not always lived up" to Obama's past rhetoric, the group complained that the Obama administration:

• Embraced the Bush administration’s tactic of using overly broad “state secrets” claims to block lawsuits focused on government misconduct.

• Fought a court order to release photos depicting the abuse of detainees held in U.S. custody and supported legislation to exempt these photos from the Freedom of Information Act retroactively. The legislation gave the secretary of defense sweeping authority to withhold any visual images depicting the government’s “treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained” by U.S. forces, no matter how egregious the conduct depicted or how compelling the public’s interest in disclosure.

• Threatened to veto legislation designed to reform congressional notification procedures for covert actions.

• Aggressively pursued whistleblowers who reported waste, fraud and abuse in national security programs with criminal prosecutions to a greater degree than any previous presidential administration.

• Refused to declassify information about how the government uses its authority under section 215 of the Patriot Act to collect information about Americans not relevant to terrorism or espionage investigations.

"Moreover, when opportunities for taking bold measures to attack unnecessary secrecy arose, the administration failed to act or chose timid and incremental steps instead," according to the report, written by Mike German and Jay Stanley.

German, a former FBI agent, is the ACLU's policy counsel on national security.  Stanley is an ACLU policy analyst on speech, privacy and technology.

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