The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has been a bulwark of our open society since it was signed into law by President Johnson 45 years ago. Today, amid debates in Congress about how best to improve the nation’s security in cyberspace, we must remember that while we have an obligation to protect the government’s most sensitive information, we also have an equally compelling duty to safeguard the public’s “right to know” about threats to their health and safety.
Of course government secrecy has its place. There are real and intensifying threats to critical infrastructure and other sensitive government information. But governments will always be tempted to overuse the secrecy stamp. When that happens, secrecy can come at an unacceptable price, harming citizens’ interest in safety, health and a clean environment.
For more than four decades, FOIA has carefully balanced the federal government’s need to protect important and sensitive information with the right of every citizen to learn what their government is doing. When Congress first considered FOIA more than four decades ago, the House of Representatives noted that “it is vital to our way of life to reach a workable balance between the right of the public to know and the need of the government to keep information in confidence to the extent necessary without permitting indiscriminate secrecy.”
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