Among the many lessons of the Jack Abramoff case, there was one very important one about the use of new technology. Despite our laws that promote transparency in government, U.S. government officials can conceal much of what they do by using private servers on government time, even to do government work. They can thus effectively create a zone free of the Freedom of Information Act.
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., ran into this issue when investigating any possible White House involvement in the Abramoff scandal. As it turned out, many emails were sent and received in the Bush White House on servers owned by the Republican National Committee.
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But of course, that’s not the only context where officials can try to create a FOIA-free zone. Chris Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute has filed a Freedom of Information request that accuses officials in the Obama White House Office of Science and Technology of essentially the same thing. The documents supposedly being hidden are related to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:
discussing the idea, prospect, development or implementation of a practice of using a closed electronic discussion forum for IPCC-related work (see discussion, below); or
produced, posted or otherwise communicated through or held on an outside (other than OSTP) electronic forum for IPCC-related work accessible by Ms. Abbott, by any author and to any recipient.
The idea here is that, in an effort to thwart FOIA and British freedom of information laws, United Nations officials at the IPCC encouraged government workers to get around those laws by using “dead-drops.” As the FOIA puts it:
“They’re really just setting up a way to communicate with each other without anyone being able to see it, and without having to physically get someone on the phone every time they want to talk,” Horner told The Examiner. The FOIA point to IPCC’s public website, which appears to encourage such circumvention of open government laws:
