Hits on government Web sites are soaring. Document requests under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, have hit all-time highs. And online archives collecting everything from court decisions to spies' names are seeing vast growth in numbers of visitors. All those developments, say advocates of greater governmental openness, show that their cause deserves more support.
"It's a huge irony that while the public is filing more FOIA requests, this administration is developing a reputation as one of the most secretive governments we've had in history," said Rick Blum, coordinator of the Web-based coalition OpenTheGovernment.org.
The Justice Department's Office of Information and Privacy said in a report last August that federal agencies received a record 3.26 million requests under the Freedom of Information Act in fiscal 2003, the most recent year available. That was a 36 percent increase over 2002, the highest one-year jump ever.
About half the increase was due to people seeking access to personal and family records from the Social Security Administration, often for genealogical research, said agency spokesman Mark Hinkle. The departments of Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security also saw large numbers of requests.
According to Nielsen//NetRatings, an Internet audience measurement service, several of the government's most heavily used Web sites recorded higher levels in January 2005 than in the same month a year earlier.
Among the most popular was the Department of Health and Human Services site, which served nearly 12 million visitors in January -- a 24 percent increase from 2004. Other government sites with fast-growing traffic included the departments of Homeland Security (54 percent more visitors), Agriculture (43 percent) and Housing and Urban Development (41 percent).
The U.S. Government Printing Office's Web site, gpoaccess.gov, averaged nearly 34 million retrievals of government documents per month in 2004 -- a million more than in 2003 and almost triple the number in 1998, according to agency figures.
One avid visitor to various sites is Mark Pruner, president of Web Counsel, a Stamford, Conn., legal marketing services company.
"I check Commerce, Census, and Bureau of Economic Analysis sites for commercial information, which is great for providing info for business and marketing plans," Pruner said. "I check the NASA sites for stuff like the Mars and Saturn missions. I look at the (Library of Congress') THOMAS site for statutes and bills, congressional sites for hearings, committee assignments and e-mail addresses and the (Energy Department) and (Computer Emergency Readiness Team) sites for info on viruses."
The popularity of the federal sites can be explained at least in part by the Internet's emergence as an easy-to-use information resource. But watchdog groups and others who specialize in collecting documents said there also is more interest in their activities.
Subscriptions to the Federation of American Scientists' Secrecy News, a free e-mail bulletin with links to hard-to-find documents on defense, intelligence and other issues (fas.org; click on "Government Secrecy"), have grown to more than 10,000 from an initial 200 four years ago.
"It's a lot of growth, and it's all self-selected growth," said Steven Aftergood, who issues the bulletin. "I don't put people on the mailing list until they've asked. So it's a barometer of public interest."
Private Web sites featuring exclusive materials obtained via government leaks or other unofficial channels also are seeing more visitors.
Among the best known are the Smoking Gun (thesmokinggun.com), which collects court documents, arrest photographs and other information about public figures; the Memory Hole (thememoryhole.org), which has put up photos of flag-draped coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq; and Cryptome (cryptome.org), a catch-all archive that once posted details of a secret CIA briefing that included the name and telephone number of the official who gave it.
Cryptome administrator John Young, a New York architect, said his site drew 50,000 hits a day before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Since then, he said, that number has grown to 150,000.
"People don't think they're getting reliable information out of the government, and they're eager to find a source of information that offsets what is being withheld," Young said.
The Bush administration denies being overly secretive.
"It's an unfair perception; it's not the way I view our approach," Vice President Dick Cheney said at an American Society of Newspaper Editors conference in 2003, citing the decision to allow embedded reporters to travel with troops in Iraq as evidence of "our commitment to the free flow of information."
President Bush in 2002 signed into law the E-Government Act, which required federal agencies to work on making more government information accessible over the Internet. A report by Congress' Government Accountability Office in December said agencies have made "positive steps" toward implementing key provisions, but have failed to carry out some others.
"The agencies are doing a good job of trying to put out information," said Peter Hernon, founding editor of Government Information Quarterly, an academic journal.
"Yes, there are areas where there's a decline," said Hernon, a library and information science professor at Boston's Simmons College. "But the ultimate question that nobody has answered is, `What's the proper balance between open access and legitimate security?' Nobody's related that proper balance to e-government."
Some activists say the Bush administration is not entirely to blame for limiting access. They note that members of Congress have blocked the public from easily obtaining background reports from the Congressional Research Service, an arm of the Library of the Congress.
House Administration Committee Chairman Bob Ney, R-Ohio, and other lawmakers who favor restricting availability of the reports maintain that while the service is publicly financed, its mission is to provide information to Congress and not the public. They say making all reports public could inhibit lawmakers who want to learn more about sensitive topics.
Anti-secrecy activists reject such arguments.
"The dominant trend in the government is to increase controls on what had previously been public information," said Aftergood, who includes links to Congressional Research Service reports in Secrecy News. "That's a troubling trend, because what it does is lower people's expectations for what kind of information they can obtain. We'd like to raise people's expectations."
Autor: Chuck McCutcheon
Quelle: Newhouse News Service, 08.03.2005
