大象传媒

I thought I was a serial requester until ...

I the individual who made 90 freedom of information requests to the 大象传媒 within a six-month period - this week the Information Commissioner issued a ruling that the 大象传媒 was right to reject his latest batch of requests as 'vexatious'.

But that's nothing. In Texas . Well, everything's big in Texas. The school board retaliated by suing the parents, but . The board has sent the couple over 100,000 pages of documents. You could probably call that an administrative burden.

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The government's planned changes to freedom of information have been delayed in an today by the Department for Constitutional Affairs.

The DCA has decided to have another consultation period, now lasting until June 21and this time about the principles behind its approach. The asks more fundamental questions than those raised in the first one.

Possibly this is merely a recognition that the initial consultative document was too limited and inadequate, or possibly ministers have taken on board the many criticisms of their plans and are now working their way round to a change of policy.

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If you're one of those people who have made a complaint to the Information Commissioner and are still waiting for it to be investigated, you may be interested in the evidence he gave last week to MPs on the Commons Constitutional Affairs Committee, which .

Discussing the implications for his office of the government's planned changes to freedom of information, Richard Thomas predicted a scenario in which their FOI caseload would double while so far the government has not offered them any extra money to deal with it.

This is an office which, according to the evidence given last week, currently has a backlog of 559 cases. Under the government's plans it would be faced with a flood of new and tricky cases involving issues like who really needs to be in the room when a request is being 'considered'.

Mr Thomas, a man not given to overstatement (or do I mean media soundbites), thinks the situation would be 'challenging'.

Rob Evans, the Guardian's freedom of information expert, gave evidence as well. He also provided the Committee with a obtained through use of FOI.

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An interesting case about freedom of information and the 大象传媒 begins in the High Court today.

The case centres on what has become known as the 'Balen Report', an internal report written in 2004 by Malcolm Balen about the 大象传媒's coverage of the Middle East. Numerous people have requested a copy of this report, but the 大象传媒 has refused to disclose it. The requesters included Steven Sugar, who is now fighting this case against the 大象传媒.

It is worthwhile being clear about the unusual nature of the issue at contention in this case. Most important disputes involving FOI are about whether or not it is in the public interest to make certain items of information open to the public. This however is about a different matter - to what extent the 大象传媒's information comes under the FOI law in the first place.

Information held by the 大象传媒 is subject to the only if it is 'held for purposes other than those of journalism, art or literature'. This 'derogation' from the Act also applies to Channel 4 and S4C, the Welsh language channel.

The 大象传媒's viewpoint is that the Balen Report is held for the purposes of journalism and so is not covered by the Act. Mr Sugar disagrees. He appealed first to the Information Commissioner, which backed the 大象传媒, and then to the Information Tribunal, which . As I have noted previously when discussing the Balen Report, this is consistent with the general pattern I have anaylsed in which any overruling by the Tribunal of the Commissioner tends to be in the direction of greater 'openness'.

The 大象传媒 has now appealed to the High Court, which will therefore be devoting itself to examining the meaning of the word 'journalism'.

The 大象传媒's corporate FOI team frequently receives information requests which the 大象传媒 argues are outside the remit of the FOI Act. Another recent case, in which the Information Commissioner again the 大象传媒's position, involved a request to see editorial notes relating to a television interview.

Commenters on this blog have sometimes in the past asked me for my views on the Balen Report, but as I have said before, since I have not read it I can't comment on its contents. However I hope this entry is a useful basic guide to the legal issues at stake in the case.

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Lord Falconer last night hinted at a minor compromise on one part of the government's plans to restrict freedom of information.

In a speech last night, he appeared to re-focus the proposals which would restrict the number of FOI requests that could be made within a three-month period to one public authority by any one individual or organisation.

Referring to the plan to give public authorites more leeway to put together or 'aggregate' requests when assessing if they are over the cost limit, he said: "That is to deal with the mass of requests designed to get round the limit. If they are genuinely different then aggregation should not apply" (my emphasis).

In contrast, the government's currently proposed changes would allow public authorities to aggregate requests received from one individual or organisation within a three-month period, even if they were on completely unconnected topics, where it would be reasonable to do so.

What Falconer's remarks may suggest is that the expected guidance on what 'reasonable' means may include advice that it is less reasonable to aggregate and thus block several 'genuinely different' requests. At the moment this is not one of the factors suggested by the DCA in their .

Of course to take Lord Falconer's words literally would suggest a much more important compromise, because the position he apparently advocates is in fact more or less the current position. If an individual makes several related but separate requests to get round the cost limit, the total cost can already be aggregated and the requests dismissed if that is too expensive, while genuinely different requests are not frustrated.

So to take his remarks last night at face value, the logic of them would be that there is no point in changing the regulations on aggregation.

However there is no evidence that the DCA intended to communicate any such significant shift in the government's position.

Lord Falconer made no suggestion of a compromise on the other part of the proposed restrictions, which would allow authorities to include time spent on reading, consideration and consultation in determining whether requests are too expensive to answer.

The main thrust of his speech was to argue that the final decisions on what material should be made public, whether from government or the courts, should be made neither by Whitehall and politicians nor by the media but by the judiciary. This argument seemed to go down well with his predominantly legal audience.

The of his speech is available on the DCA website.

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The personality of Gordon Brown seems to be a matter of topical interest these days.

So what was he like when he was actually the man in the top job - as an Edinburgh University student who was elected Rector of the University back in the 1970s?.

Time perhaps to revisit I wrote a couple of years ago, having made a freedom of information request to the University for documents from the time.

And here are some of the original documents, which I have not previously posted.

He made it clear he wanted to know everything that had been going on in meetings, starting with the Parking Sub-Committee.

He showed an early interest in financial prudence.

He rose to the defence of students accused of excessive drinking.

But he apparently wasn't pleased when the 大象传媒 failed to interview him.

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Are bloggers journalists?

Or, to put it another way, should US freedom of information law give them the same privileges granted to the mainstream media - to get information without having to pay the same charges that non-journalists are generally forced to pay?

The US House of Representatives has just passed a Bill which could give bloggers the same FOI rights as journalists affifliated to recognised news institutions. The Bill will now be considered by the Senate.

Not surprisingly bloggers George Bush isn't. explains why 'the Administration strongly opposes expanding the definition of 鈥渞epresentative of the news media.鈥�'

As a blogging representative of the mainstream media, it seems clear to me that these distinctions get increasingly hard to maintain.

But then what happens? It's only one example of the privileged access to information which journalists sometimes get. Take the advance availability of embargoed press releases, reports or books as another case. In the era when everyone's a potential journo, do we traditional hacks lose our privileges or does everyone else gain them? In other words, levelling up or levelling down?

On the other hand, strangely enough, the British government's planned changes to our FOI regulations would obstruct the mainstream media much more than individual bloggers - because however many journalists a news organisation has, whether just one or hundreds or thousands, it would still be limited to the same small number of FOI requests.

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Should FOI be extended to give citizens more right to know what private institutions get up to?

This question is raised by some , which has suggested that the Scottish Executive could extend the FOI (Scotland) Act to cover private sector bodies such as independent schools, private prisons and the press.

It's based on a of institutions which were suggested as appropriate for FOI in the Executive's recent consultative exercise.

In fact, while freedom of information may well be widened in scope to cover various private bodies which rely on public money, such as housing associations, most organisations listed are certainly safe from the public right to know.

So Jack Straw still what modes of travel are favoured by journalists who campaign about climate change.

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It's not only in Britain that freedom of information has been facing a backlash from governments.

Last night I attended a seminar given by Patrick Whelan, Director General of the His , given to the Constitution Unit at University College London, showed how the level of freedom of information requests in Ireland has zoomed downwards after the introduction of upfront fees for making a request.

In 2003 the Irish government introduced a fee of 15 Euros for making a request for non-personal information, along with some other changes that curtailed FOI. Requests to Irish public bodies for non-personal information have since fallen by over 50 per cent - from 7,936 in 2002 to 3,449 in 2006.

And earlier this week the Associated Press that over a million pages of US government documents have been removed from public access since September 2001.

It's all part of what , a leading international authority on FOI, calls .

So is it because FOI is working badly - or because it's working well?

UPDATE: But it's now a different picture in Scotland, as by the Scottish Executive.

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Occasionally it becomes clear how some basic principles of the UK's freedom of information rules have not penetrated the highest offices in the land.

On Monday tackled the question of whether Prince Charles plays too political a role. The programme referred two or three times to the Royal Household's exemption from FOI and the consequence that some information which the programme-makers had sought was not available.

The programme has produced from the Prince's Private Secretary, Sir Michael Peat. In a to the programme-makers which itemises his many criticisms of their approach, he states: 'Parliament confirmed in Section 37 of the Freedom of Information Act that communications between Members of the Royal Family and Ministers should generally remain confidential.'

Not quite, Sir Michael. In fact, states that such communications should be disclosed unless there is an over-riding public interest in keeping them secret. There should be a presumption of openness, not a presumption of confidentiality.

In practice government departments are very reluctant to release communications with the Prince. However the Ministry of Defence did send the 大象传媒 this one. Who says the age of deference is dead?

In fact, I read in Sir Michael's letter that the age we live in today is actually the 'value added age'. I have not previously come across this description of contemporary times, and feel puzzled. For the Prince this apparently means that he has decided to add value to his position by making an active contribution to national life. What it means for the rest of us I'm not sure, except that we pay VAT.

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It's in America. Nothing to do with climate change, this is a week of activity organised by the in which the US media focus on issues of open government and freedom of information.

It's a tribute to the of the US Supreme Court judge Louis Brandeis: 'Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.'

There's some interesting stuff - check out the links - but funnily enough (or actually in this case not so funnily) the thing that strikes me most are the . A couple made me smile, but the 'jokes' are largely obvious, predictable, strident and heavy-handed, with many being more or less the same from one cartoon to the next. Secrecy about secrecy, the trade-off between security and openness, the stuff that eavesdroppers hear - all the most unimaginative gags are there repeatedly. Maybe it's called Sunshine Week as you can see all the jokes coming so easily.

So what's going on here?:
Is it that I'm too British to get the American sense of humour?
Can jokes not be delivered to order?
If you care about an issue, is it hard to be funny about it?
Are the cartoons better assessed as propaganda, not attempts at entertainment?
Is freedom of information the world's least amusing topic?

Sunlight may be a good disinfectant, but clearly I'm going to have to find my laughs in the shade.

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I referred a couple of weeks ago to an important decision taken by the Information Tribunal which could make the records of some internal Whitehall policy discussions more easily available to the public.

The of the Tribunal's judgment has now been published. It confirms the potential significance of this decision, which was the first one the Tribunal took relating to how much secrecy is or is not needed for information relating to the formulation of government policy.

The Department for Education and Skills lined up the former Cabinet Secretary, Lord Turnbull, as one of its witnesses to argue that maintaining confidentiality of policy discussions is essential for good government. His appearance was one indication of the importance which government officials attach to this case. But his arguments were dismissed by the Tribunal, which decided that any harm caused by releasing minutes of the official meetings at issue was less than the benefit that would result from better public understanding of government policy.

The Department may now appeal the case to the High Court. Given that the Tribunal's reasoning was partly based on the traditional 'courage and independence' of the British civil servant, I wonder if the DfES will now have to provide evidence that British civil servants are not really as courageous and independent as the Tribunal believed.

The Tribunal also published key and related decision this week, which (subject to any appeal) would force the Department for Work and Pensions to release a feasibility study on ID cards.

Until now the main disclosures under freedom of information have related to themes like public spending, the performance of public services, public health and safety, factual background information, the actions of non-governmental publicly-funded bodies, and historical decisions of previous governments. Both these Tribunal decisions take FOI closer to more sensitive territory - the central government policy-making process.

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The 大象传媒 has today submitted its response to the government consultation on restricting freedom of information.

The response makes clear the 大象传媒's opposition to the government's proposals. It concludes:

"The people who would suffer are in fact our audiences who would be deprived of valuable information that we could no longer provide to them 鈥� information which would help hold public authorities to account and which would help facilitate public discussion of and informed participation in decision-making."

"These proposals would dramatically curtail the ability of 大象传媒 journalists and others to put into the public domain material which merits disclosure in the public interest. In this way the proposed changes would actually obstruct the aim of increasing transparency and openness in public life that lies behind the government's introduction of FOI."

"We believe that FOI has strengthened the 大象传媒's ability to achieve the objective of delivering greater accountability and transparency to licence fee payers. While our experience of handling requests has been challenging it has also been rewarding. From our perspective as an authority receiving requests we see absolutely no need for the measures that are being proposed."

The deadline for responding to the consultation is today, although I gather that some significant organisations have yet to comment and the Department for Constitutional Affairs will still be accepting some submissions next week.

Under Cabinet Office rules for consultations the Department should announce its next intentions within three months.

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When last October the government its plans to restrict freedom of information, it said it would 'take stock of the responses to this position'. (This was before the current formal consultation exercise).

So what were the responses? I have today obtained copies of them through making an FOI request to the Department for Constitutional Affairs. The score for opposing the government's plans is 12.5 out of 13.

Completely against: 6 from the media (大象传媒, Newspaper Society, Society of Editors, Financial Times, Sunday Telegraph, Newsquest), 5 from campaign groups (Campaign for Freedom of Information, Friends of the Earth, Public Concern at Work, Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative), and 1 individual (a law professor at Queen's University, Belfast).

50-50: the Association of Chief Police Officers, which backed the plan to let reading, consideration and consultation time count towards estimating the cost of FOI requests, but opposed the plan to allow 'aggregation' of unrelated requests from the same person or organisation.

I can't post all the responses, but for the sake of balance, here's the ACPO one.

What's not clear is why it took the DCA nearly three months to respond to this very simple FOI request.

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We know some MPs don't like the way the House of Commons administration is now forced to reveal all sorts of information - but wouldn't they like to know Or maybe they think they're better off not knowing.

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The Times today 59 intriguing facts that would have stayed secret without the FOI Act, so it says. You can find more than 59 大象传媒 stories based on FOI . I expect we'll get another list when Rob Evans, FOI specialist at the Guardian, addresses the .

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The Greenham Common women's peace camp was a powerful campaigning force in the 1980s, which inspired some while infuriating others.

The 大象传媒's earlier this week about how the police managed to 'paper over the evidential gaps' in some prosecutions launched against the protesters show that those strong reactions to the camp still linger, judging by some of the emails we received in response. Here's a couple:

Louise wrote:

"The women at Greenham common were a brave inspiration to millions of people who oppose the UK's weapons of mass destruction. The work of women such as Helen John alongside CND continues to expose dangerous US military bases on British soil, the myth of Britain's 'independent' nuclear deterrent and the wasteful folly of replacing it. It is a scandal that the law was abused in this way against honest people. If true, the cases should be reviewed and the women exonerated and compensated."

Barbara wrote:

"Luckily the prosecutions did stand, it was a shame the women weren't locked up and the keys thrown away. I lived at Greenham Common during the late 80s & early 90s and although missing the height of the protest there were still many protestors there, and their behaviour was disgusting. They would come onto the base and spray paint the buildings with obsenities, they would spray paint miltary vehicles and cut brake cables, they would preform lesbian acts in font of whoever was passing by including children...it was a little bit more than making their point that cruise missiles were not wanted in the UK."

But what's different from the 1980s is the fact that you can request - and the Police will release - documents from that period which show a police lawyer to be aware of weaknesses in their cases.

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