Obama declares proposed IP treaty a “national security” secret to refuse sunlight, 10 Mar 2009

From the good folks at wikileaks:

Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) rejection letter from the Executive Office of the President Office of the United States Trade Representative.

ACTA is a proposed intellectual property multi-lateral trade agreement with censorship and privacy implications, the first concrete details of which were released by Wikileaks.

The agreement is being negotiated with little transparency and has generated heated opposition by civil rights groups in many countries. It is being pushed by the copyright and patent industries in Western countries, especially the United States.

As an trade agreement, ACTA will come into power under as an international treaty, and bypass the legislatures of many democratic countries.

The document presented here shows that although the new Obama administration has preached increased transparency, it has here classified various ACTA documents as “national security” secrets, and refused to release them under the FoIA.

For more information see:

* http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/03/obama-declares.html
* http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/09/100-groups-demand-to-see-secret-anticounterfeiting-treaty.ars
* http://www.michaelgeist.ca/tags/anti-counterfeiting+trade+agreement

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