The decision by the Obama White House to block its visitor logs is absurd and unethical. The Bush administration stonewalled court orders to provide access to their visitor logs, and as with the state secrets doctrine, the Obama administration offers a disturbing continuity on an issue of transparency, in spite of multiple promises to the contrary.
Remember that the FOIA guidelines issued by Eric Holder earlier this year directed agencies to share information unless there was foreseeable "harm to national security, harm to personal privacy, and harm to law enforcement interests." The argument for witholding information about the White House's visitor logs, that the records are presidential, not agency records, and therefore not subject to FOIA, seems to fly in the face of the administration's own standard that "records should not be withheld just because an exemption technically or legally might apply."
-- A. Serwer
