Recently in Freedom of Information Act Category

Bands like Pearl Jam and Nine Inch Nails (that's Trent Reznor at right) aren't happy their music may have been used to torture prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and they've filed a Freedom of Information Act request to get the song titles. Thanks to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press for flagging Washington Post and New York Times stories on that.

 I must say that's the first time I've heard of a FOIA request made by rock bands. It's part of an effort to put pressure on President Obama to follow through on his promise to close Guantanamo Bay.

Unredacted is a "behind-the-scenes" blog just launched by the nonprofit National Security Archive at GWU:

"The Archive's own experience with thousands of Freedom of Information Act and Mandatory Declassification Review requests provides a wealth of data and fundamental lessons that we hope to share with you," says the first entry.

Unredacted will highlight "never before publicly seen" government documents in a "Document Friday" series and post commentary and analysis from NSA experts. Read the news release at the jump.

You never know who you'll meet when you start hanging with open records. Examples of open records stuff in the news right now:

• The Project on Government Oversight says in this blog post that an audit of the federal bank bailout asserts that federal officials "were not entirely forthright when explaining their decision to inject over $100 billion in capital to nine major financial institutions last fall." Thus, POGO quotes the report saying, the government has cost itself the confidence of the people who need to support it in its attempts to stabilize the financial system. Click the link above for more. We've blogged on the bank bailout here, including links to ways to track the money.

• The Associated Press got Anna Nicole Smith's FBI file using a Freedom of Information Act. (I saw this first on Scott Hodes' "The FOIA Blog.") The documents show that the FBI investigated "whether (she) was part of a plot to kill her tycoon husband's son, whom she was battling for his late dad's fortune, but prosecutors ultimately decided there wasn't enough evidence to charge" her, the AP reports. Full story here. Sorry, we at Record Tracker haven't blogged previously about Smith. But we do have a bunch of interesting stuff about the FBI, probably the coolest agency ever to FOIA.

This story from the New York Times reveals that the federal government sat on a bunch of "research and warnings about the use of phones by drivers - in part, officials say, because of concerns about angering Congress."

A victory for public access: The Secret Service originally denied requests for President Obama's list of visitors from the health care industry -- in the middle of the health care reform negotiations -- but reversed course and released the list. The Secret Service's assertion of "executive privilege" ran contrary to Obama's pledge for openness, accountability and transparency.

FBI special agents had 20 formal interviews and at least five casual conversations with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein ("High Value Detainee #1") after his capture by U.S. troops in 2003.

That's according to secret FBI reports released via Freedom of Information Act requests by the nonprofit National Security Archive at GWU and posted online last week. Read more on the jump.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's impending resignation prompted MSNBC investigative reporter Bill Dedman to note that the public is still waiting on Alaska's government to produce e-mails from Palin's time in office before the November 2008 election.

Reading Dedman's story, I don't get the impression that either the state or Palin is fighting the release of the e-mails. (You could, however, interpret the state's initial cost estimate of $15 million -- that's $15 million -- to produce the records as a way of trying to keep them private. The latest estimate, Dedman reports, is somewhat less, at $5,000-$10,000).

But the state says it's just taking a lot of time to search for the e-mails and then have them looked at by lawyers to see if there's anything that legitimately needs to be withheld. (With due respect to the Alaska folks -- and obviously I haven't done original reporting on this -- you never know if the 'it's taking us time' claim is a delay tactic in hopes the requesters will forget they asked for this stuff.)

Meanwhile, since we've praised President Obama for his stand that the Freedom of Information Act actually means that government should err on the side of releasing records, it's only fair to point out that he's made some decisions lately that cut directly against his stand for public access.

Among them is the Obama administration's recent decision to withhold White House visitor records. Naturally, there is a legal argument for why they're doing this (agencies can always develop a legal strategy to withhold public records). In this case, Obama says the records are covered by a different law than FOIA, and as such don't have to be released.

But the point is, Obama is not holding himself to his own standard on government transparency. Why?

Interesting read:

The Wall Street Journal reports that Congressional travel bills are up almost tenfold since 1995, and 50 percent since Democrats became the majority party in Congress two years ago. Lawmakers spent $13 million on overseas travel in 2008, according to the newspaper, which analyzed 60,000 records.

In keeping with our mission here to point you in the direction of doing your own research and seeing where it takes you, I'll point out this website, which has compiled Congressional travel records in a way that allows you to search by member of Congress, staffer, destination, expense and other categories.

It's tough times for everyone in the newspaper business, and now it looks like the annual event highlighting open government might have to go without a full-time coordinator.

Check out the full story from the Columbia Journalism Review.

Here's a cool graphic from the Associated Press that will help you read all those marks that comes on federal documents. 

It's pretty nifty. All those symbols and numbers mean something, and this helps you decode them.

Click on the link below to get the full graphic from the Associated Press:

Graphics.pdf