After receiving strong opposition for its peer review proposal from scientists, environmentalists, and public interest groups, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a massively revised version of the guidance and is seeking public comment on the new version. While many of the changes are significant improvements over OMB's initial policy, the new proposal fails to address some of the most fundamental complaints.

The federal government too often uses terrorism and national security as an excuse to keep unnecessary secrets. There is a great need for more information from government to make our families and communities safer, and this need has been clearly articulated in the results of a survey released last week by OpenTheGovernment.org, a new coalition aimed at fighting secrecy and strengthening democracy.

A recent report by the RAND Corporation reveals that information scrubbed from government websites after the Sept. 11 attacks were unnecessary and unproductive in protecting against terrorism. Many government agencies have removed extensive amounts of information from their websites on the remote chance it could be misused by terrorists. The RAND report establishes that the agencies' approach of viewing information only as a threat and not considering the benefits is erroneous.

The Bush administration is using classification selectively for political purposes evidenced by its inconsistent decisions on declassifying documents, according to a recent Washington Post article. In the article, critics outline a pattern of document classification that supports the administration's positions and the inappropriate classification of information that contradicts the President's positions.