The White House won't disclose its visitor logs

(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The White House announced Friday that it will not make its visitor logs public, Time reports. The decision represents a marked break between the Trump administration and its predecessor, as former President Barack Obama's White House voluntarily released nearly 6 million visitor logs — though the Obama logs did routinely omit visitors the White House deemed vaguely as "personal."

The Trump administration is using a 2013 federal court ruling to deem the visitor logs "presidential records" and thus shield them from the Freedom of Information Act. White House communications director Michael Dubke cited personal security as the reason for the privacy, saying it was in consideration of "the grave national security risks and privacy concerns of the hundreds of thousands of visitors annually."

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Visitor logs are maintained by the U.S. Secret Service and are formally known as the Workers and Visitors Entry System. Read more about the new policy at Time.

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Kimberly Alters is the news editor at TheWeek.com. She is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.