Freedom of information laws by country detail legislation that gives access by the general public to data held by national governments. They establish a "right-to-know" legal process by which requests may be made for government-held information, to be received freely or at minimal cost, barring standard exceptions. Also variously referred to as open records, or sunshine laws (in the United States), governments are also typically bound by a duty to publish and promote openness. In many countries there are constitutional guarantees for the right of access to information, but usually these are unused if specific support legislation does not exist.
Read more about Freedom Of Information Laws By Country: Introduction, Pending Legislation By Country
Famous quotes containing the words freedom of, freedom, information, laws and/or country:
“Life’s so ordinary that literature has to deal with the exceptional. Exceptional talent, power, social position, wealth.... Drama begins where there’s freedom of choice. And freedom of choice begins when social or psychological conditions are exceptional. That’s why the inhabitants of imaginative literature have always been recruited from the pages of Who’s Who.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“Only the freedom of mind can prevent the state from becoming totalitarian and from issuing totalitarian demands.”
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“I believe it has been said that one copy of The Times contains more useful information than the whole of the historical works of Thucydides.”
—Richard Cobden (1804–1865)
“Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Defoe says that there were a hundred thousand country fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery, without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)