Dear Friend of Press Freedom,
I’m Lauren Harper, the first Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy at Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), and welcome to The Classifieds. Read on to learn about this week’s top secrecy news.
Four new threats to your personal data
A spate of recent stories continue to sound the alarm on the sweeping efforts by the Trump administration and state governments to dismantle digital privacy:
- Federal medical records under threat: The Office of Personnel Management is seeking access to identifiable medical records of federal workers, retirees, and their immediate family members. This would grossly violate the privacy of nearly 8 million people, and could subject them to potential harassment and retaliation based on what kind of doctor they visited, what prescriptions they received, and more.
- Treasury’s “mega-base”: The Treasury Department is trying to build a database on recipients of pandemic-era relief programs that could include sensitive information on nonprofits and associates of those nonprofits. While Treasury’s database ostensibly targets programs from the COVID-19 era, other unrelated databases would feed into it, including “one created to rebuild the Gulf Coast after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010.”
- DOGE access to your Social Security data: An appeals court ruled that the Department of Government Efficiency can continue to access Social Security data, despite the government’s concession that DOGE employees improperly accessed the data. (And for those keeping track, DOGE is not dead — in fact, it’s growing.)
- State data up for grabs: The Tennessee Senate recently passed a bill that would acquire detailed data on transgender patients. President Donald Trump’s executive order on eliminating information silos could also grant the federal government “unfettered access” to these records.
Reports that the Trump administration is interested in building a centralized database that could further amalgamate our data make these individual stories more troubling.
That’s why FPF recently filed a FOIA lawsuit to see the blueprints agencies are using to abuse our data. Our lawsuit seeks to compel the government to show Americans what it’s doing with our information, release records that will further legal challenges, and hopefully spur the reinstatement of privacy protections.
What I'm reading
Public has right to officer names in police use-of-force records, Maryland court rules
The Appellate Court of Maryland has sided with The Washington Post in its public records suit against the mayor and city council of Ocean City, Maryland. In its ruling, the court reaffirmed that a state law passed in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020 requires police departments to release the names of officers who use force against citizens, as well as the administrative reviews of those incidents.
The internet’s most powerful archiving tool is in peril
Reporters are pushing back against major outlets like The New York Times and USA Today as the papers move to block the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine crawler. While these publishers argue the restrictions are part of a broader crackdown on automated bots, journalists correctly note that the Wayback Machine is an essential tool, especially as the federal government rapidly scrubs information from its own websites.
Body cameras show moments after federal agent shot into man’s car in D.C.
The Washington, D.C., police department released body camera footage capturing Department of Homeland Security agents firing at a vehicle in the presence of two police officers. The release is thanks to a new D.C. law that requires police to release body camera footage when federal agents use lethal force in the presence of local law enforcement.
CDC delays publishing report showing COVID vaccine benefits
If you needed a reminder that excessive partisan secrecy has a direct, negative impact on your physical health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is indefinitely postponing the release of a report showing that the COVID-19 vaccine reduced hospital and emergency room visits by roughly half.
Transparently yours,
Lauren Harper
Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy
Freedom of the Press Foundation
