A friend-of-the-court brief supporting a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit was filed last week to help the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) force the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to release records on the agency’s drone program. The organizations’ brief argued that much information had been disclosed on the program already so there was no justification for refusing to acknowledge that records on the program exist.

A letter calling on the judge presiding over the court martial proceedings of Pfc. Bradley Manning to grant the press and public access to records in the proceedings has been sent by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). The Center, which represents WikiLeaks and the media organization’s publisher Julian Assange are troubled by the secrecy that has enshrouded the proceedings. They call upon the judge to institute more transparency to better ensure that the proceedings are fair.

Yesterday, the Administration had reporters on a background briefing call — about challenges to China’s trade policies — on condition they use “senior administration official” and not actual names of the officials. This is transparency week, so the AP identified the officials. Good for them, and we should all follow that principle.

The Obama administration has come to be regarded as being deceitful on policies of openness and transparency; and in many cases, worse on freedom of information than the Bush Administration. That is something government officials have had to confront during Sunshine Week, as they try to celebrate freedom of information and open government.

News media, civic groups, libraries, nonprofits, schools and others will be promoting discussion all week on open government and freedom of information. The discussion will be a part of Sunshine Week, a national initiative launched in March 2005 by the American Society of News Editors. We’ll be covering the events at The Dissenter.

A consensus has emerged during the presidency of Barack Obama. His administration is increasingly regarded as the worst on issues related to freedom of information and transparency. FOIA attorney, Katherine Mayer, says, “Obama is the sixth administration that’s been in office since I’ve been doing Freedom of Information Act work. … It’s kind of shocking to me to say this, but of the six, this administration is the worst on FOIA issues. The worst. There’s just no question about it.”

After Citizens United, which was decided two days after Democrats lost their 60-seat majority in the Senate, there was a push to respond to the Supreme Court ruling with some legislation adding transparency and disclosure to the process. If the Massachusetts race went another way it would have passed; Democrats consistently got 59 votes in the Senate for the DISCLOSE Act. But Republicans wouldn’t budget because they reasoned that the new campaign finance system – actually not a system at all but a recipe for massive spending by corporations and the wealthy – would advantage them. In 2010 they were right.

One of the biggest disasters with the broken campaign finance system is that we actually have no reporting mechanism for assessing how much money gets spent on campaigns, at least on television. Sometimes candidates and PACs will announce their spending on ads, but local stations are not obligated to report how much they make from political advertising. You see organizations like the Campaign Media Analysis Group quoted in articles about campaign finance, but they basically make educated guesses that involve a lot of legwork. The only way to truly find out how much one television station makes from political advertising is to physically go down to the station and find the person with that information.

The world is better off because the contents of the cables are known, but the United States policy is not. Its recoil and refusal to confront and apologize for the majority of what became known has put it on a path of further disgrace and shame. It remains committed to prosecuting accused whistleblower Pfc. Bradley Manning, even though he may have played a role in exposing Tunisians, Egyptians and others to details on corruption in their countries.

Around 1,700 pages on the US government’s use of private contractors for rendition flights have been disclosed in a case involving a business dispute between Richmor Aviation Inc. and SportsFlight Air. As AP reports, the documents “shed new light on the U.S. government’s reliance on private contractors for flights between Washington, foreign capitals, the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and, at times, landing points near once-secret, CIA-run overseas prisons.”