Is there room for the Freedom of Information Act in U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft’s America?

See: On the Public’s Right to Know
The day Ashcroft censored Freedom of Information, an SF Gate Editorial Opinion. (Thanks, John)

No one disputes that we must safeguard our
national security. All of us want to protect our
nation from further acts of terrorism. But we must
never allow the public’s right to know, enshrined in
the Freedom of Information Act, to be suppressed
for the sake of official convenience.

Here’s another quote from the same piece:

Consider, for example, just a few of the recent
revelations — obtained through FOIA requests —
that newspapers and nonprofit watchdog groups
have been able to publicize during the last few
months:

• The Washington-based Environmental Working
  Group, a nonprofit organization, has been able to
  publish lists of recipients who have received billions
  of dollars in federal farm subsidies. Their Web site,
  www.ewg.org, has not only embarrassed the
  agricultural industry, but also allowed the public to
  realize that federal money — intended to support
  small family farmers — has mostly enhanced the
  profits of large agricultural corporations.

• The Charlotte Observer has been able to reveal
  how the Duke Power Co., an electric utility,
  cooked its books so that it avoided exceeding its
  profit limits. This creative accounting scheme
  prevented the utility from giving lower rates to 2
  million customers in North Carolina and South
  Carolina.

• USA Today was able to uncover and publicize a
  widespread pattern of misconduct among the
  National Guard’s upper echelon that has continued
  for more than a decade. Among the abuses
  documented in public records are the inflation of
  troop strength, the misuse of taxpayer money,
  incidents of sexual harassment and the theft of
  life-insurance payments intended for the widows
  and children of Guardsmen.

• The National Security Archive, a private
  Washington-based research group,

• has been able to obtain records that document an
  unpublicized event in our history. It turns out that in
  1975, President Gerald Ford and Secretary of
  State Henry Kissinger gave Indonesian strongman
  Suharto the green light to invade East Timor, an
  incursion that left 200,000 people dead.

• By examining tens of thousands of public
  records, the Associated Press has been able to
  substantiate the long-held African American
  allegation that white people — through threats of
  violence, even murder — cheated them out of their
  land. In many cases, government officials simply
  approved the transfer of property deeds. Valued at
  tens of million of dollars, some 24,000 acres of farm
  and timber lands, once the property of 406 black
  families, are now owned by whites or corporations.

These are but a sample of the revelations made
possible by recent FOIA requests. None of them
endanger the national security. It is important to
remember that all classified documents are
protected from FOIA requests and unavailable to
the public.

Yet these secrets have exposed all kinds of official
skullduggery, some of which even violated the law.
True, such revelations may disgrace public officials
or even result in criminal charges, but that is the
consequence — or shall we say, the punishment —
for violating the public trust.