18 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY march 16-22, 2023 www.montereycountyweekly.com Illustrations by: Caitlyn Crites The Foilies 2023 recognize the worst examples of government obstructing transparency. By the Electronic Frontier Foundation and MuckRock News It seems like these days, everyone is finding classified documents in places they shouldn’t be: their homes, their offices, their storage lockers, their garages, their guitar cases, between the cracks of their couches…OK, we’re exaggerating a little—but it is getting ridiculous. While the pundits continue to speculate whether former President Donald Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence and President Joe Biden put national security at risk, that ultimately might not be the biggest problem. What we know for sure is that these episodes illustrate overlapping problems for government transparency. It reveals an epidemic of over-aggressive classification of documents that could easily be made public. It means that an untold number of documents that belong to the public went missing— even though we may not get to see them for at least 25 years, when the law requires a declassification review. And then there’s the big, troubling transparency question: If these officials pocketed national secrets, what other troves of non-secret but nonetheless important documents did they hold on to, potentially frustrating the public’s ability to ever see them? It doesn’t do much good to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records that have mysteriously disappeared. (The equivalent in California is the California Public Records Act.) Misbehavior like this is why we created The Foilies, annual tonguein-cheek “awards” for agencies and officials that thwart the public’s right to government information or otherwise respond outrageously to requests for documents and records. Each year, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and MuckRock News, in partnership with the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, publish this list of ne’erdo-wells to celebrate Sunshine Week (March 12-18)—an annual event to raise the profile of the democratic concept of government transparency. It may be many years before the public learns what secret and not-sosecret documents weren’t turned over by past administrations to the National Archives. But when we do, we’ll be sure to nominate them for the top prizes. In the meantime, we have plenty of recognition to hand out. Read on and get to know the 2023 who’s-who of government opacity.
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