World important news by Bobette

Last week, we saw how the Federal Housing Finance Agency was above the law, with the government seemingly having no ability to tell it what to do. This week, it’s the FDIC. In the wake of its obstreporous obstructionism upon receipt of FOIA requests, the FDIC’s smug above-the-law impunity is now coming to light: JunketSleuth worked for months with an attorney from the Office of Governmental Information Services, which mediates disputes between federal agencies and people requesting public records under FOIA. The attorney was able to help persuade a number of other agencies to provide JunketSleuth with electronic and paper travel records. But she was unable to get the FDIC to provide the exact same types of records… Federal agencies routinely violate FOIA, as they’ve done since the law was created decades ago. Still, few agencies have rejected requests identical to those that others have granted, especially when the government’s own attorneys (in this case at OGIS) have worked with the agencies to secure access to the records. This letter, in particular, from the FDIC simply drips with contempt and condescension for anybody daring to file a FOIA from the FDIC. And the long history of correspondence in this case clearly exhibits an utter lack of goodwill at the FDIC, or any desire at all to comply with the spirit of the FOIA law. In general, it’s the financial agencies within the government — the FHFA, the FDIC, the Federal Reserve (especially the NY Fed, which considers itself not to be a public entity at all), and of course Treasury — which are by far the worst when it comes to transparency and disclosure. We’re constantly told that certain information is commercially sensitive, for example, only to discover when it finally does get disclosed that there’s nothing commercially sensitive about it. I’m not sure how to fix this. The White House doesn’t seem to be able to change anything: Barack Obama, for instance, released an executive memo on his inauguration day, making it clear that the Freedom of Information Act “should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.” The financial arms of government barely blinked, and continued in their secretive ways. But in this one particular case, at least, I think it might help if a sympathetic journalist started asking for the FDIC’s travel records independently from JunketSleuth. The FDIC doesn’t consider JunketSleuth a legitimate news organization, and seems to be treating it with especial prejudice. Would they send these kind of letters to an established mainstream news outlet which asked for the exact same information? There’s only one way to find out.