Opening Up the People’s House -- Sometimes Yes, Sometimes No, and Sometime I May Revert Back to Never

Yesterday, the White House announced a new policy to voluntarily disclose White House visitor access records. I had previously written about this topic here and here.

The White House is to be commended for taking this step back from embracing just one of the many extreme secrecy policies of the prior administration. However, as announced, this policy still leaves much to be desired.

First, it is "voluntary". That means that this or any future administration can revert to the previous cloak of official secrecy on the slightest whim. At the very least, the policy should be institutionalized through Executive Order or some other more permanent policy.

Second, the devil is always in the details and in this case, the details are more than a little vague. On the White House blog announcing this new voluntary policy, the exceptions were described as follows:

Aside from a small group of appointments that cannot be disclosed because of national security imperatives or their necessarily confidential nature (emphasis added) (such as a visit by a possible Supreme Court nominee), the record of every visitor who comes to the White House for an appointment, a tour, or to conduct business will be released.

The vagueness arises when the blog post is compared to the full policy which states, in part:

The White House will not release ... records whose release would threaten national security interests.

The White House will not release access records related to a small group of particularly sensitive meetings (e.g., visits of potential Supreme Court nominees).

Ironically, the synopsis appears to be more detailed than the detailed policy. "National security imperatives" seems more stringent than "national security interests". In addition, the reference to "national security" is troubling, especially since the White House visitors records system is an unclassified computer system. If the national security imperative or interest, whatever the case maybe, is not classified in that the visit can be entered into an unclassified system, what would then be the basis to withhold the information? Furthermore, "sensitive" is a vague term through which you can drive a whole bus load of Wall Street bankers seeking bailouts and the like.

This is definitely a move in the right direction, but unfortunately it still comes up short in satisfying the President's campaign rhetoric. I think Mike German of the ACLU said it best:

While the new policy is commendable, some vaguely worded exceptions to it do raise concerns about the potential for abuse in classifying matters under the umbrella of national security. We encourage President Obama to define these exceptions narrowly and to keep secret visits in the White House to a minimum. The ACLU will continue to hold the administration to its commitment to be, in its own words, "the most open and transparent administration in history."