Perception: Open Society, Transparent Government. Reality: Florida

Boing Boing points us to this amazing piece of enterprise reporting: A group of journalists posed as regular citizens making perfectly legal information requests of Florida government officials. Result: nearly half of them tried to get out of providing information to citizens. Yikes. Story here.

Excerpt: Public officials lied to, harassed and even threatened volunteers who were using a law designed to give citizens the power to watch over their government. In six counties, volunteers were erroneously told that the documents they wanted didn’t exist.