Transparency Laws Quotes

There is no country on earth with a stronger tradition of protecting the public's right to know.

We know what's in our Cheerios and in our retirement accounts because the law requires disclosure.

If it's easy for the government to learn about us, it should be easier for us to learn about the government.

Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings "The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer." [...] But since the Freedom of Information Act, I'm afraid to say things like that.

Let's hope Trump's State Department and USAID will follow open records laws and disclose the details of the Obama-Soros wellspring.

I cannot imagine any other country in the world where the opposition would seek, and the chief executive would allow, the dissemination of his most private and personal conversations with his staff, which, to be honest, do not exactly confer sainthood on anyone concerned.

The Official Secrets Act 1989 may need reforming for the digital era, but I would argue that at its heart there should be protection for whistleblowers.

The movement towards radical transparency and accountability has been gaining steam for several decades.

The United States is paradise compared to China, Russia, Ecuador and Cuba, with regard to the press. And with regard to secrecy and transparency.

If people are going to donate huge sums of money to influence elections, we have the right to know who is donating, and this will also play a key role in helping to fight off foreign influence in our elections.

And this week, I am proposing legislation to strengthen our Open Records laws to make public access to our public records surer, faster, and more comprehensive.

The future will find one of its great problems is deciding how big a business enterprise must become before the public is entitled to know the full details of its management.

While normal people have to disclose donations directly to a candidate, there is no such transparency on people donating to certain types of nonprofit organizations that can play a major role in our elections.

We need to keep pressure on our own governments to force more and more transparency.

Is there any way we can know that claims of state secrecy are in fact being used to protect the national security rather than to conceal the abuse of authority?

I don't think that any government has a right to subvert the truth or to cover up the truth, and all I see WikiLeaks doing is exposing the truth.

The time is coming when all businesses will have to be done with glass pockets.

Most leaks from large bureaucracies are “good” leaks: no danger to national security, no harm to innocent people, information the public ought to know.

[The Freedom of Information Act is] the Taj Mahal of the Doctrine of Unanticipated Consequences, the Sistine Chapel of Cost-Benefit Analysis Ignored.

Many state parole boards claim exemptions from state sunshine laws that would be unthinkable for other government officials.

It's time we update the laws so that online platforms are held to the same transparency standards as other companies that sell political advertisements.

I mean there's enormous pressures to harmonize freedom of speech legislation and transparency legislation around the world - within the E.U., between China and the United States. Which way is it going to go? It's hard to see.

The first is determining how to deal with the great industrial combinations is knowledge of the facts—publicity.

There's no one who has sued the Trump administration on transparency issues more than Judicial Watch.