[A2k] Bridges Weekly: Obama Administration Denies Request to Release ACTA Docs

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://ictsd.net/i/news/bridgesweekly/43452/

Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest =95 Volume 13 =95 Number 10 =95 18th March
2009
Obama Administration Denies Request to Release ACTA Docs

Barack Obama=92s administration has refused to make public a series of
documents related to secretive international negotiations on an
intellectual property rights enforcement treaty, citing national
security concerns.

The documents at issue include government proposals for the content of
the prospective Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which is
currently under negotiation by a group of mostly industrialised
countries (see BRIDGES Weekly, 9 October 2008, http://ictsd.net/i/news/brid=
gesweekly/30876/)
.

On the basis of the little information about the talks that has come
to light, civil society groups fear that the negotiations could impede
access to affordable medicines and threaten to criminalise acts like
non-commercial file sharing over the internet.

Knowledge Ecology International, a Washington-based organisation, had
in late January requested the release of the seven documents under the
US Freedom of Information Act, a law governing public access to
government records.

But the White House has chosen to keep all seven out of the public
sphere. =93Please be advised that the documents you seek are being
withheld in full,=94 Carmen Suro-Bredie, a senior official in the US
trade representative=92s office, wrote to KEI Director James Love in a
letter dated 10 March. She said that the information had been deemed
=93properly classified in the interest of national security,=94 in line
with a 1995 presidential order authorising the government to keep
material pertaining to economic and technological matters classified
if its disclosure would cause identifiable harm to national security.

In response to an earlier request by the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, the Bush administration had used similar reasoning to
justify withholding or censoring all but ten of some 806 pages of
records related to the ACTA talks.

Declan McCullagh wrote on Cnet News that the Obama administration=92s
decision did not sit easily with the new president=92s instruction that
government agencies =93adopt a presumption in favour of disclosure,=94 a
reversal of the Bush White House=92s policy of reticence in the face of
FOIA requests.

One of Obama=92s first acts in office was to sign a memo declaring that
=93the Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear
presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The Government
should not keep information confidential merely because public
officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and
failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract
fears.=94

In his column on the Huffington Post website, KEI=92s Love wrote that
although the public did not have access to the ACTA negotiating
documents, a group of =93=92cleared=92 advisers (mostly well-connected
lobbyists) for the pharmaceutical, software, entertainment and
publishing industries=94 did.

Governmental secrecy about the ACTA negotiations has been criticised
in other participating countries. Most recently, the European
Parliament last week called on the Commission to =93make available all
documents related to the ongoing international negotiations on the
Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement =96 which will contain a new
international benchmark on intellectual property right enforcement.=94

ICTSD reporting; =93Copyright treaty is classified for =91national
security,=94 CNET NEWS, 12 March 2009; =93James Love: Obama Administration
Rules Texts of New IPR Agreement are State Secrets,=94 HUFFINGTON POST,
12 March 2009.

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Thiru Balasubramaniam
Geneva Representative
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
thiru@keionline.org


Tel: +41 22 791 6727
Mobile: +41 76 508 0997