105 countries were asked. Only 14 of them came up with useful answers in time. A global test of transparency on anti-terrorism measures shows ”newer” democracies being more responsive than older and established ones.

In January 2010 more than 100 reporters with the news agency Associated Press started to file request on access to information to governments around the world.
The reporters wanted to know what records the governments had on the number of people how had been detained, arrested and convicted for the last ten years under anti-terrorism laws, and the nationality of these people. AP also asked for other records on anti-terrorism laws (see under documents).

In short the answer to the request was that some 35 000 people have been convicted for terrorism in the last decade, to be compared with a few hundred per year before 9/11.
But this figure is mostly an estimate as only 14 governments provided full answers. Another 38 governments eventually answered some of the questions, and provided some data.
On paper more than 5,3 billion people in the world are to some extent covered by freedom of information laws.
In reality only half of the governments follow the laws, AP reporter Martha Mendoza concludes.

In spite of the limited results the test also showed some interesting findings.
Martha Mendoza reports:
”Newer democracies were in general more responsive than some developed ones. Guatemala confirmed the AP request in 72 hours, and sent all documents in 10 days. Turkey sent spreadsheets and data within seven days. Mexico posted responses on the Web. By comparison, Canada asked for a 200-day extension. The FBI in the United States responded six months late with a single sheet with four dates, two words and a large section blanked. Austria never responded at all.”

In an interactive ”rollover-a-country-map” for the globe AP has divided the 105 countries in five categories, from ”responsive” to ”rejected”.
The maps shows a big spread of results within Europe. 

19 european countries with a heavy weight to the east were judged as ”responsive”: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine.
In the other end Belgium, Bulgaria and Denmark directly rejected to answer.
And from Austria, Czech Republic,Greece, Iceland, Moldova, Slovakia and Slovenia there was no reaction at all.

Although illustrative of how differently governments reacts to FOI-requests, the results might not give the whole picture of how the laws function.
Denmark and Belgium were for example grouped together with DR Congo as rejective, since their laws carries exemptions to release information about criminal investigations.If information was requested in other fields, Denmark and Belgium would probably get some more flattering results.

The FOI-test and its result was published as a news story on AP's ordinary platforms, but the material has also been made available at AP's Facebook page with links to the interactive map and to the source documents (in the languages of origin) received.

Following the global test, AP is looking for new issues to approach, Martha Mendoza tells Toby McIntoch at FreedomInfo.org:
”We would like to continue to test FOI laws worldwide, and we are open to ideas about collaboration with researchers, but…11.) We would need to come up with something very compelling to ask for. We’re hoping readers will submit ideas on our Facebook page to get that rolling. The terror arrests and convictions story was important. What next? 2.) And we’d need to know that this is worth our time and effort. There are always cost-benefit balances to meet, and this has taken a lot of time and effort,” she says. 

Staffan Dahllöf