MILNET: Freedom of Information Act

The Freedom of Information Act allows for a petitioner to request information about him or herself from the U.S. government. The Act is quite liberal in its definition, with the intent to ensure the government cannot overstep its authoirty or misuse its aurthority to prevent a person from access to pertenent personnel information. It also allows the press, for instance, access to information which is not patently dangerous to the National Security. Of course this requires judicial review, a Federal Judge deciding "en-camera" whether the information is dangerous (usually the contention of the government or one of its agencies such as the CIA or FBI).

An amendment to the Freedom of Information Act (1967 Amendment, Sub Section A, PUB.1.90-23), states that "...documents describing clandestine intelligence operations...are exempt from disclosure covered under the section...where disclosure could only cause damage to National Security in that it would necessarily reveal intelligene operations and appartus and could easily lead to disclosure of the identity of individuals within the United States and abroad, who aided in such operations....but could well place their lives in danger, and would inhibit other individuals from aiding in future intelligence efforts." The amendment has repeatedly held up in court, for instance in Bennet vs. U.S. Dept of Defense, 1976, 419 F. Supp. 663.

This amendment allowed the CIA and other agencies to broadly classify documents as being exempt from action of the Freedom of Information Act, and thus eliminating the need to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests on such documents. The exception for the CIA though is when employees or former employees are in legal action with the government and the documents pertain to that employee or his or her activities while employed or under investigation.

In other documents, however, government agencies must respond and in many cases are required to "sanitize" requested documents removing sensitive information. An example might be an investigative work document which mentions the name of the requestor, as well as individuals clandestinely investigating that person. The names of the investigator might be a plant inside a violent organization who would take violent action if the identity were known. Therefore the government agency would be required to remove all information from a copy of the document, such that the identity cannot be ascertained.

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