FREEDOM OF INFORMATION (FOI) advocates should continue building their network and forging alliances with progressive lawmakers because it is still possible to force an FOI law through Congress even if President Benigno S. Aquino does not seem keen on supporting it.
Sheila Coronel, founding director of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism and currently the director of the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University, pointed out that even the United States had difficulty pushing an FOI law through the legislative mill.
Ironically, Coronel said, it was the Democrat President Lyndon B. Johnson who resisted the passage of an FOI Act. In fact, the US FOIA was passed in 1966 because of the persistence of liberal Republicans. One of these, ironically, was then Illinois Representative Donald Rumsfeld, who would later serve as Defense Secretary of President George W. Bush, under whose Presidency many civil liberties were curtailed.
“When the US passed the FOI in 1966, it was a very controversial law. Johnson signed the law kicking and screaming; he really did not want it,” Coronel said.
In an informal gathering of friends just before the weekend, Coronel pointed out that the Philippines could learn from the US experience of building networks to overcome institutional blockages.
In the Philippines, for example, President Aquino has shown he is not warm to the idea of an FOI law, despite his assurances during the Presidential campaign that he would support the measure. As a result, members of the House of Representatives have dribbled the measure around during the 15th Congress, effectively putting the bill back on square one by the time the 15th Congress ended this year.
Coronel said that while the experience of every country in passing an FOI is different, what was clear was the need to build a network among friends and even with apparent foes.
“It was a combination of individuals taking initiatives and building coalitions across parties with the help of powerful media,” Coronel said.
In other countries, FOI laws became reality as a result of radical transitions, such as the fall of governments. Unfortunately for the Philippines, there were other more immediate social and political concerns rather than an FOI when former President Ferdinand Marcos was ousted in 1986.
As well, Coronel pointed out that the US FOI law was not perfect when it was first signed. In fact, the FOI law has gone through several revisions, many as a result of the scandals that had rocked the United States in the sixties and in the seventies.
Coronel also noted a curious trend that few had forseen when US President Barack Obama was elected to his first term of office. While Obama basked in the adulation of a country that appeared to have gotten tired with the secrecy and the abuses of the Bush administration, it seemed that the Obama administration was becoming even more secretive.
“Both openness and secrecy are necessary,” Coronel conceded. “It is crucial to protect privacy to allow the government to protect the citizens. One cannot function without the other. The contention is what is to be open or secret. There is no more debate whether information is crucial to democracy. Now the question is , what is to be kept secret or open.”
Coronel said that while Obama appeared to lean in favor of transparency in his early years in office, things began to change even before his second term.
“There is no single reason why that changed. Today, there are more lawsuits against federal government agencies, 28 percent more FOI lawsuits in the first two years of Obama than the first two years of Bush,” Coronel said. “There are 33 percent more denials of information requests in Obama’s first year than in Bush’s first.”
As well, the Obama administration was prosecuting more cases against allegations of government leaks “than any other US government in history.”
The reasons for the apparent changes are not clear, although Coronel said several ideas have been put forward. One is that Obama may be trying to show that he is tough on terror, since the Democrats are always being criticized by the Republicans on issues of security; another is that “this is just the grind of the bureaucracy doing its work, with no directive from the White House.”
Coronel however raised another issue that is bound to confront all FOI advocates here and abroad.
In recent years, more and more of the critical data are being collected, not by governments and their agencies, but by private companies such a Yahoo, Google, and the telecommunications companies.
“By virtue of their provision of these services, they have information on your search history, email, Facebook account, etc,” Coronel said. “If the courts want access to that information, it is asking a private company that owns that information.”
This would have serious implications on an FOI law, Coronel said. While governments are still keepers of large amounts of information, more and more information are increasingly being collected and held by private entities.
“What does this mean? FOIA became almost irrelevant (in the US). If most of the information is in the hands of private entities, what does FOI still mean? The traditional concept of an FOI is information collected and kept by the government. But government cannot release phone records because it does not collect phone records in the first place.”
“That to me is the real dilemma now,” Coronel said. “You are dealing with global companies. So the national laws make no sense. If you want information from Google, you have to ask Google.”