Latest news with #publicrecords
Times
4 days ago
- Politics
- Times
I've fought the secret state for decades. Afghan scandal is no surprise
One of the things that struck me most noticeably when moving to the UK from the US in 1997 was the secrecy of the state toward its citizens. Having worked as a crime reporter in America, I discovered that most of the public records and information I used to do my job were actually illegal to access in the UK. I found the secrecy wasn't unique to law enforcement but rather a default attitude among officials. It didn't matter if I were asking for details of food hygiene inspections, parliamentary expenses or police reports, the attitude was the same. A kind of disbelief and then a patronising disdain, by which I was meant to understand that it was not my 'place' as a mere citizen — or subject as I learnt was the UK term — to ask for a full accounting from agents of the state. Instead, I should silently let officials get on with the important business of making decisions in my name and with my money. 'Put up, shut up' seemed to be the norm. This didn't strike me as particularly democratic. I remember battling in 2004 with the Highways Agency, now known as Highways England, just to get contact information for its new freedom of information officer. I was putting together a book, Your Right to Know, about people's new rights under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) 2000 that was coming into force in 2005. I thought it would be a game-changer for British democracy and I wanted to include contact details for the new FOI units in public agencies. I was used to naming public officials. In America it was no big deal; anonymity was only used if there was a valid reason. But you would have thought I'd asked for nuclear codes such was the shock and pushback I received to this simple request. The idea of providing actual names was anathema and I began to wonder who was the master here, and who the servant. The more I researched my book, the angrier I became. With all the idealism and arrogance of youth, I set out on behalf of the beleaguered British citizen to bring transparency to this secretive and feudal country, training hundreds of journalists to use the FOI Act and making requests myself. The result is probably one you know, when a five-year legal battle culminated in a High Court victory in 2008. I'm talking, of course, about MPs' expenses. Yet even after the court ruling, MPs still refused to publish their full expenses, arguing the public couldn't be trusted with the raw data and so it had to be 'redacted' at great expense and time. • MPs demand to know why they were kept in the dark over Afghan leak The months dragged on while MPs tried to find ways to exempt themselves from their own FOI law. It wasn't until a year later that full details were finally revealed, after an insider who worked in the room where the data was being redacted leaked the full list to the highest bidder on Fleet Street. The civilian employee said he leaked details of the claims because he was angry that, at the same time MPs were secretively claiming for plasma televisions and duck houses, Britain's armed forces in Afghanistan were having to work two jobs just to buy body armour and other vital equipment. A lot has changed since then but not, it seems, the British state's penchant for secrecy. Or the military's supercilious way of dealing with people in Afghanistan. Last week it was revealed that for two years the government used wide-ranging powers to prevent UK media reporting on a data leak of the names of 19,000 Afghans who had applied to move to the UK after the Taliban seized power in 2021. These included interpreters and military assistants who trusted the Ministry of Defence with their personal details and those of their families. Instead of those people being notified they were on a 'kill list', the MoD opted instead to try to lock down all knowledge of the leak. This is how authoritarian states are used to controlling information, but it's become much harder in the digital age. And indeed, while the MoD was successful in gagging the press, the information continued to flow online. As one of the Afghans, a woman known as Person A, told The Times: 'Lives could have been saved if everyone had been told about the leak back in August 2023. It would have enabled them to flee into Iran or Pakistan, which would have bought them some time. These families trusted the MoD and sat waiting for evacuation.' • Larisa Brown: I investigated the Afghan data leak. Ministers were gambling with death The MoD did eventually relocate 7,000 Afghan nationals to the UK, which cost about £850 million of taxpayer money. These were not always the Afghans most in danger, however, but rather those most likely to spread awareness of the leak. The privacy injunction, initially granted for only four months on September 1, 2023, meant there could be no public scrutiny or parliamentary oversight of this decision. The MoD claimed it needed this unprecedented secrecy to get those most in danger out of Afghanistan. But this did not happen, and instead it sought longer and longer extensions. In fact, it was only later, after media court action, that the MoD began relocating Afghans in large numbers. The superinjunction was lifted only on July 15 this year. Secrecy, in the hands of the powerful, is too easy a tool to abuse. The distance from protection to cover-up is short, and a tool initially intended to help can quickly morph into causing harm. That's why it should never be a default for anyone in power, but rather an exception. When I was appointed to the Independent Surveillance Review panel, a group convened in 2014 by the deputy prime minister at the time, Nick Clegg, to look at the legality, effectiveness and privacy implications of mass government surveillance, I saw how the former heads of the intelligence agencies were often blind to the dangers of secrecy. They had a faith in officialdom that I didn't share. Where they saw officials using secrecy only for the good of the people, I saw a tool easily abused to hide mistakes, cover up embarrassments and accrue power that corrodes democracy. Such an abuse of secrecy is clear from the Afghan data leak. Instead of owning the mistake and fixing it, the MoD wasted considerable public money to hide the breach for two years, putting many Afghans in harm's way. Secrecy used in this way is not for the protection of the people, but the protection of the powerful. It's about preserving the reputations of officials at all costs. The MoD's use of a worldwide gagging order to cover up its mistake makes it clear that such injunctions have no place in a democracy. The press has a hard enough time getting basic information out of the British state, it shouldn't have to fight battles in secret courts as well. Heather Brooke is an investigative journalist and the author of The Revolution Will Be Digitised
Yahoo
15-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Ohio's Geauga County continues its fight to keep ICE contract secret
Immigration officials, their backs turned to hide their identities, pose with an Australian citizen who faces possible deportation back to his home country. (Photo by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) As masked federal officers raise fears by raiding workplaces and courthouses and detaining elected officials who object, Ohio's Geauga County is fighting to keep secret its contract to jail immigrants those officers arrest. The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio last month sued Geauga County when the county failed to provide a copy of its contract to jail people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The ACLU is asking the Ohio Supreme Court to issue a writ mandating that Geauga County, which is just east of Cleveland, turn over the contract. The ACLU contends that such a contract between two public entities is a public document. For its part, the county is arguing that only ICE can release it. In a court filing Tuesday, Geauga County lawyers said 'they have not denied that they possess these records at the time of this filing, and that they have asserted that the requested records are prohibited by disclosure under federal law, and therefore exempted from disclosure under the Ohio Public Records Act, specifically, RC 149.43(A)(1)(v).' The provision cited under the Ohio public records law says that state officials can't release 'records the release of which is prohibited by state or federal law.' However, Geauga County didn't cite any part of state or federal law saying that ICE detention contracts are exempt from release. As a general matter, government documents can usually only be withheld or redacted if they contain sensitive personal information, business secrets, would compromise a law-enforcement investigation or if their disclosure would endanger public safety or national security. None of the nine exemptions the Department of Homeland Security says it has from federal open records law appears to apply to the ICE contracts. Geauga County can't simply hide behind federal immigration officials to avoid its obligations under Ohio open-records law, said Amy Gilbert, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU. 'Tellingly, Geauga doesn't dispute that it is withholding public records from disclosure,' she said in an email. 'The county's supposed reliance on ICE to tell it what to do does not relieve the county of this statutory duty. As a clear legal matter, their duty is governed by Ohio law.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Meanwhile, the lawfulness of ICE's conduct has been called into question elsewhere in Ohio — and across the country. ICE officers — some of them masked — on Tuesday handcuffed New York City Comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander when he asked to see the warrant they had to arrest a migrant who had appeared for a hearing at immigration court. The tactic in those and other courthouses has deprived migrants of a traditional safe space to engage with the legal system, critics say. Federal agents last week took U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla to the ground and handcuffed him as he tried to question Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a press conference. Noem, who has struggled to explain fundamental legal protections for individuals, oversees ICE. In Butler County in Southwestern Ohio, supporters of Emerson Colindres had been demonstrating outside the jail against his ICE detention. Born in Honduras, Colindres, 19, had been living on Cincinnati's West Side since he was eight. On June 4, the recent high school graduate and soccer standout was arrested during a routine ICE check-in. CityBeat on Tuesday reported that ICE had moved Colindres to a private jail in Louisiana — even though his attorneys a day earlier had filed a motion to stop the deportation. In a written statement, Ohio Immigrant Alliance founder Lynn Tramonte said that if the goal of President Donald Trump's mass-deportation program was to make people feel safer, it's not working. 'No one benefits when masked ICE agents arrest immigrants at their immigration court hearings, while they are following the process,' she said. 'When ICE tricks a high school soccer star into showing up for an appointment, and arrests him on the spot. That doesn't help anyone at all.' Tramonte added, 'Emerson Colindres has a U visa waiting for him. One branch of the federal government is processing it, while another branch of the same government is trying to deport him.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
15-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Won't Hand Over His Emails With Elon Musk
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) says he shouldn't have to turn over emails between himself and billionaire Elon Musk in response to a journalist's public records request, arguing they include 'information that is intimate and embarrassing and not of legitimate concern to the public.' The Texas Newsroom, as part of an initiative with ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, said it sought out the emails between Abbott and Musk to see what kind of influence Musk had in Texas. During this year's legislative session, Musk's lobbyists advocated for nearly a dozen bills that would benefit his companies, and along with that, Abbott also cited Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency as a reason for Texas to launch its own efficiency department. In April, The Texas Newsroom requested emails between Abbott and Musk and others who have emails associated with Musk's companies dating back to the fall. The governor's office said it would take 13 hours to review the emails with a cost of $244.64 to be paid before the work was done. The Texas Newsroom staff said it wrote the check, but after it was cashed, Abbott's office responded that the emails were actually confidential and asked Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to keep them private. Paxton has yet to make a decision, and his office didn't immediately respond to HuffPost's request for comment. Matthew Taylor, Abbott's public information coordinator, argued in a letter that the emails should not be released because they included discussion of what Texas offers businesses to encourage them to invest in the state, 'privileged attorney-client communications,' and policy-making processes. Taylor also cited common-law privacy, a legal standard that protects information that a typical person would find 'highly objectionable' to publish and is not of public concern. 'The [Office of the Governor] asserts the information ... is intimate and embarrassing and not of legitimate concern to the public, including financial decisions that do not relate to transactions between an individual and a government body,' he wrote. In a comment to HuffPost, Andrew Mahaleris, Abbott's press secretary, said The Texas Newsroom's focus on the 'intimate and embarrassing' language in the letter is 'purposefully misleading.' 'The reporter knows full well that the language used comes from a Supreme Court of Texas opinion half a century old — with over 10,000 Office of Attorney General opinions applying those same common law privacy protections,' Mahaleris said. 'Texans and Texas businesses who disclose confidential and privileged information to state government should feel confident that their information will be protected.' The Texas Public Information Act Handbook of 2024 lists some examples of other things to be kept confidential, including medical records or records in an investigation of alleged child abuse or neglect. Gov. Greg Abbott Rants About Football, 'Losers' When Asked Who To Blame For Texas Floods Texas News Anchor Rips Kristi Noem And Greg Abbott Over Flood Press Conference Texas Lt. Governor Blows Up At Gov. Greg Abbott Over THC Ban Veto
Yahoo
15-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Won't Hand Over His Emails With Elon Musk
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) says he shouldn't have to turn over emails between himself and billionaire Elon Musk in response to a journalist's public records request, arguing they include 'information that is intimate and embarrassing and not of legitimate concern to the public.' The Texas Newsroom, as part of an initiative with ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, said it sought out the emails between Abbott and Musk to see what kind of influence Musk had in Texas. During this year's legislative session, Musk's lobbyists advocated for nearly a dozen bills that would benefit his companies, and along with that, Abbott also cited Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency as a reason for Texas to launch its own efficiency department. In April, The Texas Newsroom requested emails between Abbott and Musk and others who have emails associated with Musk's companies dating back to the fall. The governor's office said it would take 13 hours to review the emails with a cost of $244.64 to be paid before the work was done. The Texas Newsroom staff said it wrote the check, but after it was cashed, Abbott's office responded that the emails were actually confidential and asked Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to keep them private. Paxton has yet to make a decision, and his office didn't immediately respond to HuffPost's request for comment. Matthew Taylor, Abbott's public information coordinator, argued in a letter that the emails should not be released because they included discussion of what Texas offers businesses to encourage them to invest in the state, 'privileged attorney-client communications,' and policy-making processes. Taylor also cited common-law privacy, a legal standard that protects information that a typical person would find 'highly objectionable' to publish and is not of public concern. 'The [Office of the Governor] asserts the information ... is intimate and embarrassing and not of legitimate concern to the public, including financial decisions that do not relate to transactions between an individual and a government body,' he wrote. In a comment to HuffPost, Andrew Mahaleris, Abbott's press secretary, said The Texas Newsroom's focus on the 'intimate and embarrassing' language in the letter is 'purposefully misleading.' 'The reporter knows full well that the language used comes from a Supreme Court of Texas opinion half a century old — with over 10,000 Office of Attorney General opinions applying those same common law privacy protections,' Mahaleris said. 'Texans and Texas businesses who disclose confidential and privileged information to state government should feel confident that their information will be protected.' The Texas Public Information Act Handbook of 2024 lists some examples of other things to be kept confidential, including medical records or records in an investigation of alleged child abuse or neglect. Gov. Greg Abbott Rants About Football, 'Losers' When Asked Who To Blame For Texas Floods Texas News Anchor Rips Kristi Noem And Greg Abbott Over Flood Press Conference Texas Lt. Governor Blows Up At Gov. Greg Abbott Over THC Ban Veto
Yahoo
14-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Texas Governor Says Emails With Musk Are Too 'Embarrassing' to Release
The Texas Newsroom requested records of all correspondence between Governor Greg Abbott and billionaire Elon Musk from their legislative session this year. After initially approving the request and charging the newsroom $244 for the records, Abbott's office refused to share any documents, stating that the exchanges between Musk and Abbott were too 'intimate and embarrassing' to be released. 'Section 552.101 encompasses the doctrine of common-law privacy, which protects information that is … highly intimate or embarrassing, the publication of which would be highly objectionable to a reasonable person and not of legitimate concern to the public,' a letter from Abbott's counsel read. 'Embarrassment' is a ludicrous reason to block the public release of messages between one of the country's most powerful Republican governors and the richest man in the world, who has plenty of his own political motivations. And as ProPublica notes, that 'common law privacy' doctrine is usually only levied in situations that involve highly personal information, health data, or children, not to very wealthy, public, and powerful men. Were Musk and Abbott chatting about bringing a Grok data center to Texas? Were they planning a trip to Mars? Were they flirting? What could be so embarrassing and intimate about these messages? We'll likely never know, as a recent ruling from the Texas Supreme Court has granted more protections to public officials who are asked to divulge public records. Abbott's office has yet to elaborate.
