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The Australian Tax Office has escalated a row with a website that facilitates freedom of information requests, claiming it "clutters the internet". The Right to Know website, run by the charity OpenAustralia Foundation, was launched to simply the FOI process and improve public access to government information. More than 2000 requests have been archived since November 2012 including material related to pay negotiations and the remuneration of senior ATO staff. Last month, the ATO announced it would not cooperate with the website claiming it published the names of department staff and exposed abuse, stress, anxiety and damage to professional reputation. Correspondence released under FOI laws reveal the ATO considered launching a court injunction to remove "offending material on the grounds it was defamatory, or threatening in a criminal sense". An OpenAustralia Foundation spokesman said he was "baffled" by the decision to reject FOI requests given they had cooperated with the website for four years. He said the foundation agreed to redact the names of ATO staff when published in error, but the agency had also asked for removal of a request related to an internal review of an FOI decision. The initial request, submitted by Patrick Conheady, called for a list of IT security guidelines, standards and instructions within the ATO. FOI correspondence reveals ATO assistant commissioner Jonathan Todd believes the website "adds no value to what we already do". "The publication of all the procedural correspondence about the FOI request serves no useful purpose," he said. "It merely clutters the internet with information which is of no interest to anyone and makes finding the material disclosed in response to the request more difficult than it is on the ATO website. "In short, the Right to Know website publication of procedural correspondence about FOI requests exposes ATO staff to unnecessary risks for no benefit." When the decision to refuse FOI requests was made, an ATO spokesman said it was prompted by concerns about the management of the website rather than a single case. Mr Todd said the website administrators had failed to remove or redact the content and "denied responsibility for the material even through they were publishers". The ATO decision comes after Australia's most senior public servants called for freedom of information laws to be amended to conceal sensitive advice to ministers from public scrutiny.

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