District Court Rejects DHS and ICE FOIA Withholdings That Conceal Misrepresentations and Embarrassment: In a bold move that strengthened the positions of plaintiffs Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and the Immigration Justice Clinic at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, a district judge in New York has ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR) to release more information on communities’ options to “opt-out” of the Secure Communities program. This is part of an ongoing fight between the plaintiffs and specifically ICE and DHS, as originally outline in this FOI Friday post.

EPIC v. NSA: FOIA Suit for Cybersecurity Authority Will Move Forward, though National Security Council Remains a “FOIA-Free Zone”: After the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a FOI request with the NSA for information relating to their cybersecurity measures, the agency forwarded the request to the National Security Council instead of answering it, passing it into the hands of an un-FOIA-able agency. However, while a judge recently upheld the NSC’s FOIA exemption, the ruling also stated that the NSA was still responsible to respond to EPIC’s request on their own.

FOIA request seeks details of Justice Thomas’ jet and yacht travel: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has aroused a whole lot of controversy recently in the wake of a New York Times article that alleged Thomas had, after receiving $42,000 in gifts over six years prior to 2004, accepted as gifts the use of planes and yachts owned by real estate magnate Harlan Crow. Common Cause, a nonpartisan government watchdog, has filed a FOI request with the U.S. Marshals to determine if Thomas has traveled in Crow’s yachts or planes and, if so, if these trips have been properly reported.

Also, check out Muckrock’s Michael Morisy’s article on the failure of government transparency for Commonwealth Magazine here.

Now, without interruption, the news:

FBI investigated Sargent Shriver’s links to communists: We’ll start this week with an interesting look back on the politics of the past. R. Sargent Shriver Jr., who passed away in January, was the founder of the Peace Core, leader of Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty, and held numerous other political positions. After his passing, his FBI file was released through a FOIA request, revealing that Shriver had been investigated for Communist ties after being appointed by LBJ to the post of ambassador to France. One Red flag that arose in the investigation was Shriver’s travels in Europe with a youth group through the Experiment in International Living, who had previously been investigated for their sympathies towards Chinese Communists. The FBI was still investigating Shriver’s communist ties as late as 1986, when the agency reported on Shriver’s relationship with former campaign employee David Karr, who the FBI believed passed information to the KGB.

ICE Stalling On More FOIA Requests Concerning Domain Name Seizures: I’m beginning to doubt I’ll ever get to write one of these without having to call out ICE for something. One would think the agency wasn’t actually in support of increased government transparency! The horror. Anyways, the scoop this time is pretty simple: ICE has been seizing domain names, and people want to know why. Requests by Michael Robertson’s NakedGovernment and MuckRock’s own Aaron Schwartz (director of Demand Progress) have been stonewalled for months.

FOI hearing officer backs police on release of Haberek images: Man, what is it with politicians and sending illicit pictures to people they aren’t married to? No, I’m not talking about Anthony Weiner. I’m talking about First Selectmen Ed Haberek, who allegedly sent inappropriate pictures to an unnamed woman in 2010. The Connecticut-based newspaper The Day requested the pictures, which were sent from the Selectman’s town-issue Blackberry. After the original request was rejected, The Day appealed the decision, but the FOI Commission rejected the appeal because the investigation involved uncorroborated allegations and would reveal private information.

Public records outrage of the day: North Providence edition: Finally, from WPRI news: after reporter Tim White broke a story about a Providence, RI firefighter stealing prescription painkillers during an emergency call, he called the fire department to ask some followup questions. After gathering some basic info, he requested that, pursuant to Rhode Island’s public information laws, the department send over the arrest record. What he received was less a useful document and more a sheet of redactions and a few innocuous sentences, despite the assurances from the station that only names would be redacted. White refused to take that lying down, and after a new call to the station, received a much less-redacted document. You can compare the two by clicking the link, but what we can take away from this is that the attitude of redact first, ask questions never pervades even local government.

Now to the news:

Trends in Parking Ticket Appeals: First off, some local color for all you MA MuckRockers out there, as from Somerville comes this report of odd dismissal patterns for parking ticket appeals. After Watertown native Mark Pickering’s appeal of a parking citation was responded to with a rejection, plus an additional $5 fine, author Barry Rafkind filed a request (through MuckRock!) for data on the rejection rates for traffic citation appeals over the past four years. The results themselves are laid out in graphs in the article, but suffice it to say that Somerville’s appeals process has been quite inconsistent in its results for similar appeals based on such unimportant factors as whether the person appealed online or not.

Court says FOIA request cannot be used in whistleblower lawsuit: The Supreme Court ruled recently on the case Schindler Elevator Corp. v United States, setting a precedent by saying that in False Claims suits, Freedom of Information request results are not admissible as evidence because they count as public information, which is covered by the False Claims Act. After Daniel Kirk sued his former employer over a failure to correctly report the employment of Vietnam vets, his wife confirmed his suspicions with a FOI request. Unfortunately for Kirk, the Supreme Court considered the request’s results “publicly disclosed information” and so sided with his former employer.

DHS Accused of Hiding Fingerprinting Data: In response to controversy over whether the DHS is forcing local law enforcement to hand over or collect fingerprint data from illegal immigrants, critics of the department (specifically the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and the Immigration Justice Clinic at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law) have filed a FOI request for the metadata (labeling data, list of recipients, formatting information, etc.) of emails sent by and to DHS employees concerning the fingerprinting program. As you may remember from way back, a New York federal judge has previously ruled that agencies must release metadata in FOI requests (in a case that also involved the DHS and the NDLON).

FBI, CIA Must Comply With FOIA Request: Finally, in Salt Lake city, one Jesse Trentadue has won his case against the FBI and CIA, whom he argues have deliberately withheld information and obstructed his FOI requests concerning the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995 that his brother perished in. U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups ruled that the intelligence agencies must release all information, videos, or other such things gathered in the aftermath of the bombing, or provide evidence as to why the search for such information would be so difficult as to be exempt.

Now to the news:

Debate rages on over releasing bin Laden images: By now everybody’s heard the news about Bin Laden, be it from the strange emergency press conference, online, or various news outlets. Everybody has also probably been exposed to a number of conspiracy theories surrounding Bin Laden’s death, Pakistan’s involvement, the burial at sea, etc. President Obama, seeking to avoid a gloating feel and also to stem further violence, has made the decision to not release the photos of Bin Laden’s dead body, only spurring on the countless theories about the sketchy nature of the whole operation. A MuckRock user was one of the first to file a FOIA request for the pictures and videos, though it may take a while before anything is heard back.

Ex-Justice Department Official: Obama Could Be Forced to Release the Osama Death Photos: One of the voices heard in the maelstrom surrounding the Osama Bin Laden pictures is that of Daniel Metcalfe, the former chief of the Department of Justice’s Office of Information and Privacy. Metcalfe argues that the photos (taken, presumably, by Navy SEALS on the covert mission) are ineligible to be protected from FOIA requests because they come from a request-able agency, are not classified, and were not part of covert ops as defined in federal law. It remains to be seen if and how the government will challenge the requests for the now-hidden pictures.

FBI Lies to Federal Court: In a court case between the ACLU and FBI concerning a request the ACLU had filed in 2006, the court ruled that the FBI had the right to withhold information but that at the same time the judge criticized the FBI for lying to the court. The original request was filed on behalf of Muslim groups in California in response to rumors that the FBI was attempting to infiltrate mosques in Southern California. While it was upheld that the FBI could deny the request for information about the infiltrations, the judge blaster the FBI and DoJ for saying that no results were found that matched the ACLU’s request when, in fact, 120 results were located.

FBI using surveillance software to track suspects online: From Activist Post via Raw Story comes the information that the FBI, utilizing a software known as Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier (CIPAV), is able to see huge amounts of information from the computer the software is present on, including the URLs visited by the user. While it’s unclear how the software gets on a computer, it is suspected that it exploits holes in computer security like a regular piece of spyware. This chilling information was turned up by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in a 2007 FOIA request after rumors hinted at government spyware usage.

The 132-page document includes:

• Saddam’s thoughts on his greatest accomplishment: “The social programs for the citizens of Iraq and improvements in other sectors of the economy including enhancements to education, the health care system, industry, agriculture, and other areas that generally enhanced the way of life for Iraqis.”
• When asked about his own mistakes, he told the interviewer that “All humans make mistakes, and only God is free of error.” But that he would not identify mistakes to an enemy, and the American system of government was his enemy.
• Saddam wishes that both America and Iraq advance in all areas, “financial, religious, etc.”.
• Pages and pages of details about coups, the Ba’ath uprising, the early days of the Iraqi revolution, and more.

The document release is 132 pages, but unfortunately is not searchable until somebody takes some OCR software to it. You can download it directly from the FBI (warning: PDF).

What, you thought the warehouse from Raiders of the Lost Ark was some George Lucas fantasy? Ok, maybe it is, but the Boston Globe’s Bryan Bender takes us someplace almost as secret, the FBI’s “secret file room”:

It is where the government has hidden the most secret information: plans to relocate Congress if Washington were attacked, dossiers on double agents, case files about high-profile mob figures and their politician friends, and a disturbing number of reports about the possible smuggling of atomic bombs into the United States.
It is also where the bureau stowed documents considered more embarrassing than classified, including its history of illegal spying on domestic political organizations and surveillance of nascent gay rights groups.

The FBI recently released memos detailing what the special file room contains and why those documents were placed there rather than the FBI’s normal filing system. The memos cover the time from the 1950s through the 1980s, and include information about international espionage, domestic threats and a rather heightened interest in gay activist groups and “allegations of homosexuality of some very prominent individuals.’’

Our friends at GovernmentAttic.org are hosting the memos (Warning: Link to 17.1 MB PDF), which run over 470 pages.