We'll Be Watching

President Barack Obama's administration on Wednesday made it more difficult for the government to suppress information on security grounds, amid allegations the power was used to cover up Bush-era excess.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced that from today he would personally review claims to state secrecy privilege, and vowed tougher standards would be put in place.

"Under the new policy, the department will now defend the assertion of the privilege only to the extent necessary to protect against the risk of significant harm to national security," a Justice Department statement said.

"The policy requires the approval of the Attorney General prior to the invocation of the states secret privilege, except when the Attorney General is recused or unavailable."

  Raw Story

Unavailable?

They always leave themselves a loophole, don't they?

And is he going to have to recuse himself on the matters where he already used the state secrets clause for continuing and extending the Bush administration outrages? Closing the barn door after the horse is out with this little footwork, isn't he?

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald comments:

On a different note, the so-called "new state secrets policy" which the Obama DOJ is set to unveil is such a self-evident farce -- such an obvious replica of all the abuses that characterized the Bush/Cheney use of that privilege which Obama himself has spent the last eight months embracing -- that I couldn't even bring myself to write about it.

Emptywheel comments:

Now why, lo after all these months, would the Administration suddenly announce their "new policy" at this instant? One reason certainly might be the fact that oral argument on plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment in the absolutely critical state secrets case of al-Haramain v. Obama are scheduled for this morning in front of Judge Vaughn Walker in the Northern District of California.

[...]

Tack in the distinct possibility that the government made material misrepresentations about their data mining and warrantless surveillance to the FISA Court and that illegally information thusly obtained inappropriately made its way into the affidavit for the search warrant executed on the al-Haramain Foundation in Oregon, and you see the veritable cornucopia of problems the government could be so determined to stop inquiry into in the al-Haramain litigation before Judge Walker.

[...]

There is a lot the government has to hide in al-Haramain, and they are desperate to do just that. It would be a perfect time to whip out a ruse in the form of a "new state secrets policy". Even if there is nothing at all new about it.

[...]

The Obama Administration has done nothing but put the proverbial lipstick on the existing baked pig.

Adam Serwer comments:

Eric Holder told Russ Feingold a long time ago that he shared Feingold's concerns about abuse of the state secrets privilege--the legal doctrine used to protect information vital to national security in court cases--but the administration continued to invoke the privilege to block entire lawsuits related to torture, rendition, and surveillance, rather than using it to block specific pieces of evidence, as it was originally intended. The Obama administration's abuse of the state secrets privilege mirrors the Bush administration's, and that's despite months of promises to reform its use.

[...]

The difference between the new policy and the old policy is that the old way was "more informal," according to Charlie Savage. In other words, the new policy seems to formalize the process by which we got the results that had civil liberties groups crying foul in the first place.

[...]

If anything, the "new policy" seems designed to obscure the fact that the government intends to invoke the privilege again very soon.