Article: THE PRICE OF SECRECY

The current report is an expanded edition of the first "Secrecy Report Card" issued last year. It comes "at a time when secrecy continues to expand", but also "at a time when there is a vocal chorus pushing back against secrecy", the report says, pointing to several pieces of pending federal legislation designed to give citizens more efficient access to government documents.

Many other open government advocates agree that 2004 has been a discouraging year for transparency.

Steven Aftergood, who heads the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists, declares, "As a society we seem to be losing our ability to rationally debate complicated policy decisions. Secrecy aggravates the problem by excluding people from the debate, or by narrowing their frames of reference. Nothing less than the future of American democracy is at stake."

Eric R. Biel, Deputy Washington Director and Senior Counsel for Human Rights First, finds, "This report card is another searing indictment of a system out of control. For the most part this rapidly growing secrecy has not contributed to any real increase in national security."

Maria LaHood, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, represents Maher Arar in his case against the U.S. government, says, "Canadian citizen Arar sued U.S. Government officials for detaining him in New York on his way home to Canada and sending him to Syria where he was tortured and detained for nearly a year. The U.S. Government has argued that the bulk of Mr. Arar's case cannot be litigated because the reason he was sent to Syria instead of Canada is a state secret, which if disclosed would harm national security and foreign relations. If the Court accepts the Government's position, not only would the Government's policy of sending people to countries to be detained, interrogated and tortured be beyond judicial review, but so could any of the Government's illegal acts done in the name of 'national security'."

Beth Daley of the Project On Government Oversight, believes that "The expanding cloak of government secrecy is allowing more incompetence and cronyism to fester similar to the kind we've seen this week in the relief effort for hurricane Katrina."

Timothy H. Edgar, Legislative Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, cautions, "Basic information that is crucial to oversight of the government's new spy powers under the Patriot Act -- such as how it is using new powers to obtain personal records -- has been cloaked in secrecy, making it impossible to judge the effectiveness of these powers or their impact on civil liberties."

Dr. Jack N. Behrman, former assistant secretary of commerce and professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina, notes, "The fact of secrecy makes the public question the truthfulness of what is made public. The final result is to weaken the institutions on which America was founded."

And Brian J. Foley, a professor at Florida Coastal School of Law in Jacksonville, says, "Secrecy is the enemy of freedom. When politicians hide their deeds, citizens are rendered impotent. They're disabled from accepting or rejecting -- or helping shape or even correct -- the actions of the government that is supposed to serve them. It's not a government by, for or of the people when citizens aren't even allowed to discover what it's doing."

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