Hacker News Reader

From the article: "But in July 2009, Homeland Security introduced a directive requiring a wide range of information to be vetted by political appointees for "awareness purposes," no matter who requested it."

So yes - the Obama administration "PUT IN PLACE" this policy. It's not a long article. Read it.

The article said this was done by Janet Napolitano's staff. Napolitano is the former Democratic governor of Arizona who was put in place by Obama, so I think it's fair to criticize him here.

Bush did have issues with FOIA, though, but they were quite different from investigating the politics of people making requests. Specifically, under Bush, agencies were supposed to deny as many requests as possible. I don't believe Bush ever had the DHS looking into who was requesting what (at least, not that we know of). After all, the DHS had no permanent leadership until Obama appointed Napolitano.

I think the Bush administration policy was simply to deny access early and often.