By almost every available measure, government secrecy continued to increase over the past year, according to report this week from OpenTheGovernment.org, a broad coalition of consumer and open government groups.
The report (pdf) describes the mostly unfavorable trends across a range of quantitative indicators, including classification and declassification activity, “black budget” spending, invention secrecy, Freedom of Information Act processing, and more.
“These trends indicate that citizens will have to wait even longer to find out what their government is doing,” said Patrice McDermott, director of OpenTheGovernment.org.
The new report is the fifth in an annual series issued by the coalition. See the 2008 Secrecy Report Card from OpenTheGovernment.org.
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