{"id":17765,"date":"2011-10-17T11:06:36","date_gmt":"2011-10-17T17:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/?p=17765"},"modified":"2011-10-17T14:48:16","modified_gmt":"2011-10-17T20:48:16","slug":"an-ipcc-backchannel-%e2%80%98-to-hide-ipcc-deliberations-from-foia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/2011\/an-ipcc-backchannel-%e2%80%98-to-hide-ipcc-deliberations-from-foia\/","title":{"rendered":"An IPCC backchannel \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc[…]’ to hide IPCC deliberations from FOIA?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This WUWT<\/a> is going to be discussed. Here’s the bit I consider the core:<\/p>\n

CEI has learned of a UN plan recently put in place to hide official correspondence on non-governmental accounts, which correspondence a federal inspector general has already confirmed are subject to FOIA.<\/em> This \u00e2\u20ac\u02dccloud\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 serves as a dead-drop of sorts for discussions by U.S. government employees over the next report being produced by the scandal-plagued IPCC, which is funded with millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars.<\/p>\n

As our FOIA request details, the UN informed participants that it was motivated by embarrassing releases of earlier discussions (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153ClimateGate\u00e2\u20ac\u009d key among them), and to circumvent the problem that national government transparency laws were posing the group.<\/em><\/p>\n

CEI reminds OSTP that this practice was described as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153creat[ing] non-governmental accounts for official business\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153using the nongovernmental accounts specifically to avoid creating a record of the communications\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, in a recent analogous situation involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff. CEI expects similar congressional and media outrage at this similar practice to evade the applicable record-keeping laws.<\/p>\n

This effort has apparently been conducted with participation \u00e2\u20ac\u201d thereby direct assistance and enabling \u00e2\u20ac\u201d by the Obama White House which, shortly after taking office, seized for Holdren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s office the lead role on IPCC work from the Department of Commerce. The plan to secretly create a FOIA-free zone was then implemented.<\/p>\n

This represents politically assisting the IPCC to enable UN, EU and U.S. bureaucrats and political appointees avoid official email channels for specific official work of high public interest, performed on official time and using government computers, away from the prying eyes of increasingly skeptical taxpayers.<\/em><\/p>\n

CEI also reminds OSTP of a similar, ongoing effort by the administration to claim that records on U.S. government computers belong to the UN IPCC, refusing to produce them under FOIA. This practice was affirmed in a report by the Department of Commerce\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Office of Inspector General earlier this year.<\/p>\n

As talks resume next month to forge a successor to the failed Kyoto Protocol, CEI looks forward to OSTP ceasing this unlawful activity, and providing prompt access to the requested records so the taxpayer can know what they, and the IPCC, are up to.<\/p>\n

So this morning we requested all relevant records under FOIA, including all records sitting on that server, as they all were provided to U.S. government employees for official purposes. This was filed with OSTP run by controversial \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcscience czar\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and, we now know, former Mitt Romney \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcclimate\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 advisor John Holdren. The taxpayer deserves to know about this coordinated effort between OSTP and the IPCC to subvert U.S. law.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m waiting to learn some specifics. Generally speaking, it seems to me that FOIA was enacted by Congress<\/i> precisely to promote transparency. The spirit of the act it is make it possible for members of the public to learn what government agencies are doing. FOIA itself specifies which types of information may be refused when requested. <\/p>\n

It seems unlikely FOIA was written in a way that would permit government agencies covered by FOIA at their own volition to set up communication channels with the sole purpose over permitting their employees to get around FOIA.<\/p>\n

Being neither an attorney nor an expert in our FOIA act, I don’t know whether the provisions of the act passed by Congress permit such a thing. Acts can be badly written; as the great Mikado observed: <\/p>\n

That’s the slovenly way in which these Acts are always drawn. However, cheer up, it’ll be all right. I’ll have it altered next session.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What I don’t know is whether in this<\/i> case the “slovenly” aspect would writing FOIA in a way that makes it trivially easy for government agencies to erect a layer of opacity around their workings or whether the “slovenly” way would be to write it in a way that does not<\/i> permit it. With regard to any discussions of alterations of FOIA, I would vote for not permitting the wall of opacity. If setting up back channels not permitted, don’t alter FOIA. If it is permitted, alter to not permit it. <\/p>\n

Update: 3:48 pm <\/strong>Full Document Available in PDF<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This WUWT is going to be discussed. Here’s the bit I consider the core: CEI has learned of a UN plan recently put in place to hide official correspondence on non-governmental accounts, which correspondence a federal inspector general has already confirmed are subject to FOIA. This \u00e2\u20ac\u02dccloud\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 serves as a dead-drop of sorts for discussions … Continue reading An IPCC backchannel \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc[…]’ to hide IPCC deliberations from FOIA?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[134],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17765\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}