When California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) signed the California Toxic Release Inventory Act of 2007 (Assembly Bill 833) into law on Oct. 13, California became the first state to pass legislation to undo the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) December 2006 weakening of the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). The new state law establishes the threshold for detailed reporting at 500 pounds of a listed toxic chemical, which was the original threshold for the TRI program before EPA changed the regulations to reduce the reporting burden on companies.

After Alberto Gonzales took over as Attorney General at the Justice Department in February 2005, the Department issued secret memoranda justifying extreme interrogation techniques, reported the New York Times in early October. The importance of such secret opinions and the lack of independent oversight was magnified on Oct. 9 when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review a case involving the alleged secret rendition and torture of a German citizen.

OpenTheGovernment.org released a report in September detailing an increase in government secrecy in the realms of national security, government contracting, and state governments, among other areas. The Secrecy Report Card 2007 is the latest report in an annual series by the coalition that analyzes objective measurements of secrecy in government.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has revoked a three-year-old secrecy policy and plans to release documents from two nuclear fuel processing plants in response to congressional demands. This about-face was precipitated by a congressional inquiry into a uranium leak kept secret from the public for more than a year.