Considers S. 186, to amend the Administrative Procedure Act to require establishment of procedures to give public free access to Federal records.

Today, transparency is a widely heralded value, and the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is often held up as one of the transparency movement’s canonical achievements. Yet while many view the law as a powerful tool for journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens to pursue the public good, FOIA is beset by massive backlogs, and corporations and the powerful have become adept at using it for their own interests. Close observers of laws like FOIA have begun to question whether these laws interfere with good governance, display a deleterious anti-public-sector bias, or are otherwise inadequate for the twenty-first century’s challenges. Troubling Transparency brings together leading scholars from different disciplines to analyze freedom of information policies in the United States and abroad—how they are working, how they are failing, and how they might be improved. Contributors investigate the creation of FOIA; its day-to-day uses and limitations for the news media and for corporate and citizen requesters; its impact on government agencies; its global influence; recent alternatives to the FOIA model raised by the emergence of “open data” and other approaches to transparency; and the theoretical underpinnings of FOIA and the right to know. In addition to examining the mixed legacy and effectiveness of FOIA, contributors debate how best to move forward to improve access to information and government functioning. Neither romanticizing FOIA nor downplaying its real and symbolic achievements, Troubling Transparency is a timely and comprehensive consideration of laws such as FOIA and the larger project of open government, with wide-ranging lessons for journalism, law, government, and civil society.

Annotation An examination of the origins of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), its effective use, the uneasy acceptance of the FOIA by federal agencies and the current impediments to its full application.

Divided into six sections, this title examines Government secrecy (GS) in a variety of contexts, including comparative examination of government control of information, new definitions, categories, censorship, ethics, and secrecy's relationship with freedom of information and transparency.

Considers legislation to require Federal departments and agencies to publish unclassified information and regulations. a. Justice Dept study "Is a Congressional Committee Entitled To Demand and Receive Information and Papers from the President and the Heads of Departments Which They Deem Confidential, in the Public Interest?" (p. 63-146). b. "Demands of Congressional Committees for Executive Papers" by Herman Wolkinson, Federal Bar Association, published in the Federal Bar Journals of Apr., July, and Oct., 1949 (p. 147-270). c. "Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights Survey of Withholding of Information from Congress" memos and summary analysis prepared by subcom staff (p. 287-428). d. "Congressional Power of Investigation" Committee Print No. 83-99, prepared by the Legislative Reference Service of the Library of Congress Feb. 9, 1954 (p. 447-513). Includes the following documents.