Despite Obama’s pledge to make the government more open, a report shows secret laws still abound
The Justice Department has kept classified at least 74 opinions, memos and letters on national security issues, including interrogation, detention and surveillance, according to a report released Tuesday by the Brennan Center for Justice.
Also still classified are between 25 and 30 significant opinions issued between 2003 and 2013 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), the secretive federal court that interprets the law governing foreign intelligence-gathering inside the United States.
And at the State Department, 807 international agreements signed between 2004 and 2014 have not been published.
Despite President Obama’s pledge to make government more open and transparent, federal agencies are still keeping a considerable amount of policy and legal interpretations under wraps, the Brennan Center found.