Less information access since 9/11, AP study says

States have steadily limited the public's access to government information since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a new Associated Press analysis of laws in all 50 states has found.

Legislatures have passed more than 1,000 laws changing access to information, approving more than twice as many measures that restrict information as laws that open government books.

Federal agencies responded to the terrorist attacks by shutting down Web sites, pulling telephone directories and rethinking everything from dam blueprints to historical records.

In statehouse battles, the issue has pitted advocates of government openness — including journalists and civil-liberties groups — against lawmakers and others who worry public information could be misused, whether it's by terrorists or by computer hackers hoping to use your credit cards. Security concerns typically won out.

The analysis discovered a trend since the Sept. 11 attacks in legislative work that ended last year: States passed 616 laws that restricted access — to government records, databases, meetings and more — and 284 laws that loosened access. An additional 123 laws had either a neutral or a mixed effect, the review found.

AP reporters in every state, often with help from their local press associations, tracked the government-access bills introduced since terrorists brought down the World Trade Center towers, damaged the Pentagon and killed 40 people in a field in Pennsylvania when four planes were hijacked and used as missiles.

Reporters then assessed the impact of each new measure that passed and rated it as loosening existing limits on public access to government information, restricting the limits, or neutral.

While fear of another terrorist attack drove many new proposals, it wasn't the only motivator. Concerns about identity theft, medical privacy and the vulnerability of computerized records have sparked many pieces of legislation, too.

Lawmakers say they are recalibrating the balance between information that could be used against society and what society needs to know.

The give-and-take of a legislature usually forces changes to open-government bills, such as a measure proposed last year in Oklahoma, where state Sen. Charles Wyrick, a Democrat, sought to exempt the state's new Department of Homeland Security from the Open Meetings Act and Open Records Act.

"I don't know why all of a sudden the Holy Grail of security and safety is now closing records," Mark Thomas, head of the Oklahoma Press Association, said after the bill was introduced. "It seems to me we would be more secure if we knew what was going on around us."

Negotiations brought a compromise. The law that passed allowed the department to keep communications between the agency and the federal government confidential, along with security plans for private businesses.

Still, the data show which side got more out of negotiations overall: The AP analysis of 1,023 new laws dealing with public access to government information found that more than 60 percent closed access. Just over a quarter created new avenues of access. The rest had a neutral effect, often through technical changes to existing laws.

Lately, privacy worries are starting to trump security fears.

This month, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty announced a new governmentwide effort to target identity theft, barring access to driver's licenses, phone records and Social Security numbers. No longer, the governor said, should there be a presumption that government information is public. "That's backward," he said.

Open-government advocates disagree. The way they see it, if Pawlenty is successful, information that used to be public in Minnesota will soon be unnecessarily locked away.

Meanwhile, two new polls gauging Americans' views on government openness found a majority think the federal government leans more toward secrecy than openness, while eight in 10 are convinced open government is necessary for an effective democracy.

The polls also found, however, that the public believed government should keep some information private, particularly if it is necessary to combat terrorism.

One poll, by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University, found that 64 percent of respondents thought the federal government is somewhat or very secretive, while more than a third think local and state governments lean more toward secrecy.

Forty-six percent said government records should be considered public and their release should only be blocked when it "would do harm."

A separate poll found respondents supportive of open government and access to public records.

The poll by the AccessNorthwest research and outreach project at the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication at Washington State University in Pullman found that 81 percent said democracy requires government to operate openly.

Nearly seven in 10, or 69 percent, told researchers open public records and meetings keep government honest. Nearly as many, 63 percent, said it was OK for government officials to keep records secret if they deem it necessary.

The Scripps poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The Washington State University poll has an error margin of plus or minus 5 percentage points.