Federal judge faults Bush administration for excessive secrecy - firstamendmentcenter.org: news: WASHINGTON — A U.S. judge scolded the Bush administration yesterday for responding with sometimes blanket secrecy to a request for documents on its warrantless-wiretapping program.

Privacy groups and civil rights organizations sued the Justice Department last year, demanding it release documents under the Freedom of Information Act. The government refused to release most of the records, arguing that such a move could jeopardize national security and undermine terrorism investigations.

But U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. said that reasoning is not good enough.

"While the court is certainly sensitive to the government's need to protect classified information and its deliberative processes, essentially declaring 'because we say so' is an inadequate" defense, Kennedy wrote in EPIC v. Department of Justice.

Kennedy sided with the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the American Civil Liberties Union about some of the documents, saying those should be turned over to the groups. As to other records, Kennedy agreed with the Justice Department that they should not be turned over, either because they were classified or because they were drafts of documents not covered by public records laws.

(Read Original Article - Via firstamendmentcenter.org.)