“There is nothing in the Constitution about ‘the public’s right to know’,” wrote former Assistant Director of Central Intelligence Mark M. Lowenthal in his book “Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy” (CQ Press, 2000, page 143).
“The Constitution safeguards freedom of speech and of the press, but these are not the same as a right to information,” Mr. Lowenthal argued.
This is not quite correct. The Constitution may be readily understood to grant a public right to know certain types of information.
Specifically, the Constitution imposes an obligation on the government to publish two categories of information: a Journal of Congress (Article I, section 5) and a statement and account of all receipts and expenditures (Article I, section 9).
And the government’s obligation to publish this information is semantically identical (or nearly so) to a public right to know it.
The public only gained a broader legal right to access government information with the Freedom of Information Act, which was first enacted in 1966. Prior to that time, one could ask for information, but the government had no duty to respond. Since then, thanks to the FOIA, the public has had a legally enforceable right to compel disclosure of non-exempted information.
As for the phrase “the right to know,” it was apparently coined in the 1940s by Kent Cooper, who was the executive director of the Associated Press. The New York Times credited him with originating the phrase in an editorial on January 23, 1945. (As noted by James S. Pope in the Foreword to “The People’s Right to Know” by Harold L. Cross, Columbia University Press, 1953, p. xi.)
In an ideal world, we would not have state or federal climate intervention research bans. We would have researchers and institutions that would not shy away from revealing the good, the bad, and the ugly of these technologies and doing so responsibly.
“What excites me is that it’s very tempting to be very discouraged, and say, ‘Oh, we’ve got these archaic institutions that are calcified and you could never change them.’ But I think we’re in the middle of a technological revolution that will upend lots of things, and does provide a window.”
Ask people what worries them most right now, and they’ll say the cost of living and their livelihoods, not climate change. But those concerns are not separate.
After a year-long delay, this April, EPA released the latest air toxics data, which only included raw air data downloads. This year, for the first time in nearly 25 years, the air toxics data did not include cancer risk estimates.