From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media.

I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone.

Four more years.

As the cheers and jeers fade, we are left with issues.

Issues barely mentioned in the campaign, but fundamental to our democracy, freedom of information,

government accountability, personal privacy. All these took a big hit during the post-9-11 Bush

administration, and Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald says they never recovered. He begins our

review of President Obama's record on these issues.

He promised to usher in what he called the most transparent administration ever. He said that

he particularly would act to protect whistleblowers. He called the act of whistleblowing a noble

and courageous act. He railed against the invocation of the state secrets privilege

by the Bush administration as a means of shielding their conduct from judicial review. And in general,

he talked about the urgency of avoiding making critical decisions behind a wall of secrecy and therefore

beyond the realm of democratic accountability. So let's go through some of these vows one by one.

The state's secrets privilege.

This essentially enables a White House to close down a trial on the grounds that it could jeopardize national security.

It's rarely invoked.

Well, it was rarely invoked before the Bush administration.

The Bush administration began using it far more aggressively than any president prior to it by far.

And the Obama administration has gone even further than that. It essentially tells the court that even if we,

the government, have violated someone's constitutional rights or even acted

...