Access to Information Programme | Information newsletter issue 11(23) November 2005

We Are Not As Good As We Think We Are - We Also Have Work To Do
Kristin Adair National Security Archive

Kristin Adair is a Freedom of Information Associate at the National Security Archive, an independent non-governmental research institute located in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the United States Freedom of Information Act.

Ms. Adair, how do you evaluate the ultimate outcomes of the two days conference on FOI Litigation in Sofia?
For me it was very interesting to not working mostly on freedom of information in the US. I was glad to hear about all the other countries, particularly in Eastern Europe, where there are newer FOI Laws and to see how different countries are approaching it. I believe that differences are very helpful to see that some things have worked better and some things have not worked so well. Even I, coming from the US, where we have been doing freedom of information for a long time, got a lot of ideas on how some particular problems could be approached. Also, the importance of sharing information once we leave the conference. I am interested in doing more of communication with some of these other people—lawyers, who are working on freedom of information. It is important to keep finding out what is happening all the time in different countries and be able to help and share stories. It was very effective to hear from all the participants. I think this was the best outcome definitely.

What lesson have you learned from East European countries in the FOI area?
It is important to see the countries that have just started out in freedom of information. I was not even alive when the FOI Act was starting out in the USA, so I don’t know how it was in the beginning but it seems that history is repeating in our present times. Certain attitudes of current political climate and political administration and also the situation of the war on terrorism signify that in the last five years or so the government is returning to a more repressive, more secret form. It is interesting to see that some countries, former communist countries, where in the US we have a stereotype of not being as open and not being as democratic, are having similar problems as ours. I think that I’ve at least learned my lesson by listening to these stories that even we might think we are ahead, we are not. It will be important for many other Americans to know this as well. Maybe we take it for granted that we have come so far and that we have an advance democratic system but there are so many problems still. I think this is an important lesson that I will take back that we are not doing so well as we think we are. We are not fighting as hard any more. Some people are just working so hard and doing such great things though it’s more difficult.

Since you are probably the most recent recruitment of the National Security Archive, what are the three most significant outcomes that you are going to implement in your future work?
I think that the one is being more involved in the Freedom of Information Advocates Network. We have been founding members of the FOIANet but we have not been so active in following the news and keeping up with what’s going on because we do so much of our work focused on the US. However, I think that the one thing that I would definitely take back is that we need to be more participating. I think that some of the stories that I told from the US were interesting and people here did not know about. I realized that it was interesting for them, and also helpful. Some of the stories that I heard about how certain cases have happened and different ways their courts have approached them could be useful for us. Also, just to use more international examples in our work. When we are talking to people or talking to legislative staff, in Congress, to judges, and to agencies to show how things happen differently in the rest of the world. We would use examples and quote from an international conventions, or Article 19, or cases of the European Court of Human Rights or anything else that involve access to information but I think this is even more effective. In such a globalized world, people in the US need to see that we are not as good as we think we are and we have work to do. Other people are doing certain things better. Aside from that, I also think that getting more information about specific comparative examples is extremely important. We know about very general which countries have a law, which is similar to ours. But these very specific things that we talked about that hadn’t necessarily thought about like specific aspects of government contracts for example, or specific matters of national security, that might be open in one country and not open in another country. If we look and compare these things it would give us ideas on how to approach them in the US. If we have something that is not available, it might be available somewhere else.

How often do you think such events should be organized?
It’s very helpful if we could have the Network getting together once a year in different places. It’s a small thing, but to see AIP office in Sofia and how you do your work and what kind of things you are doing was helpful. At the conference, we heard from a lot of countries, but it will be nice to actually go to these countries and see how things are working there and how they are running their organizations. I think that there are just so many good ideas that came out of this. As soon as I left I wanted to go and write e-mails to people. I wanted to make notes about what I wanted to work on with the web site and the e-mail network. All was so helpful. I haven’t been involved in a network so long and this is obviously my first such conference. I would very much like to see more and hear more often from people.

What else do you consider an important factor for the future development of the FOI community?
We work remotely a lot with some of the international organizations. It was very helpful to have together the people from national organizations and international organizations like Open Society Institute and Article 19. They had some interesting perspectives. Talking to them, I found out that there were so many projects that Open Society is doing that I didn’t know about. They do projects in the US and funding for us, but some other international projects. I think there are ways the National Security Archive could get involved and combine our efforts, something we haven’t done to this point. I think that everybody here has got their ideas of future cooperation. That is why it is very important to have international NGOs together with national representatives.