On Nov. 5, the House Judiciary Committee began markups on a bill that would codify standards for when and how the executive branch may apply the state secrets privilege in civil litigation. Although the Obama administration has promised certain limitations on its own use of the privilege, civil liberties and open government groups continue to call for legislation to address the privilege. Ultimately, the committee approved the bill on an 18-12 vote and referred the legislation to the full House.

The State Secrets Protection Act of 2009 (H.R. 984) was introduced by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY). The purpose of the bill is to allow executive branch secrecy claims to be examined in a secure manner. The markup was the first time the committee had addressed the issue since the bill was referred to it in June.

The legal system is often accused of lagging behind the technological curve – indeed, it is only a couple of years since a high court judge made headlines by saying: “I don’t really understand what a website is.” He later said that the remarks were taken out of context.

Once in a while, however, the courts get ahead of the curve. Eight years ago, for example, America took the pioneering step of making every court document available online to the public. The grand plan was, understandably, hailed by transparency advocates and freedom of information campaigners.

The Federal Reserve said a U.S. judge erred in ruling that the central bank should identify companies that received emergency loans last year, according to court papers filed to overturn the decision.

U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska improperly used the standard of “imminent harm” to a borrower’s competitive position rather than a lesser standard of “likely harm,” according to papers filed yesterday by Fed lawyers led by Senior Counsel Yvonne Mizusawa.

Several organizations, including SLA, sent a letter on 5 November 2009 to President Obama expressing concerns about the lack of transparency and openness surrounding the negotiations on a new Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (“ACTA”).

Twenty groups, including OMB Watch, have sent a letter calling on Congress to include accountability and transparency provisions in any health care reform legislation. Specifically, the groups focused on federal advisory committees – panels that will provide critical advice on health care issues if legislation is passed. The groups represent a wide variety of public interest issues.

Three nonprofit organizations that have been tracking the Recovery Act today called for the Obama administration to overhaul its jobs data system before releasing its first large set of data on Oct. 30.

Based on what they called very disappointing data quality and presentation in the release of a very small amount of federal contracting data yesterday, OMB Watch, Good Jobs First, and the Economic Policy Institute said they are seeking to meet with officials at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board (Recovery Board) to detail the groups’ complaints.

A California county’s three-year battle to prevent a nonprofit group from obtaining public mapping data has ended disastrously for the county after it was ordered by a court to pay the group $500,000 in legal costs.

Last February, Santa Clara County, the heart of California’s Silicon Valley, was ordered to hand over the public records to the California First Amendment Coalition for a minimal duplication fee after initially trying to charge $250,000 for the data and then appealing to the federal government to designate the data a national security secret that couldn’t be released. This week the county paid out to the coalition twice the amount in legal fees that it had once hoped to rake in as profit for the data.

Today a federal district court denied the government’s latest emergency motion asking for a 30-day stay in last Friday’s deadline to release records relating to telecom lobbying over last year’s debate over immunity for corporate participation in government spying. The new deadline is October 16, at 4 p.m. Pacific time. We sought the records pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act.

Lawrence Lessig’s essay warns that the unintended consequence of the success of what he calls the “naked transparency movement” will be to “simply push any faith in our political system over the cliff.” His implication is that the movement’s proponents are insufficiently interested in appropriate analysis of all political data they are working to liberate, and care not whether the correlations and comparisons they generate “reveal something real.” Worse, he argues, Americans generally lack the attention span and judgment necessary to make appropriate use of this new information flow.

We beg to differ.

How could anyone be against transparency? Its virtues and its utilities seem so crushingly obvious. But I have increasingly come to worry that there is an error at the core of this unquestioned goodness. We are not thinking critically enough about where and when transparency works, and where and when it may lead to confusion, or to worse. And I fear that the inevitable success of this movement–if pursued alone, without any sensitivity to the full complexity of the idea of perfect openness–will inspire not reform, but disgust. The “naked transparency movement,” as I will call it here, is not going to inspire change. It will simply push any faith in our political system over the cliff.