May 13
Philip HalinUncategorized AP, DHS, FOI, FOI Friday, FOIA, FOIA Friday, Liberal, New Democrat, O CANADA, OBL, Osama bin Laden, Whistleblower
This week’s FOIA Friday’s a little shorter than usual because I have to head off to opening night of the production of Hamlet I’m in as soon as I finish. Worry not, however, because it’s still chock full of good information! Basically everything we’re looking at can be found here anytime you like, and if you have any suggestions, please do send them on over to tips@muckrock.com.
Now to the news:
Top lawmaker protests ‘whistle-blower’ demotion: From AP writer Ted Bridis come the opening chapters of what is sure to be a long fight. After Catherine Papoi, the former deputy unit chief in charge of the Freedom of Information Act for the DHS, reported to an internal whistleblower organization that political appointees were interfering in the FOI process, she was demoted and stripped of her title. Republican Rep. Darrell Issa has called for Papoi to be given her job back, and for the DHS to remind their employees of their whistleblowing rights. The DHS does not consider Papoi to have been demoted because she has not taken a pay grade hit, and they deny all allegations that the change in status was a move of revenge.
If FOIA Request Is Successful, AP Says It Will Decide Which OBL Pictures the Public Will See: From Newsbusters.org, a watchdog site that aims to “expose Liberal bias”, writer Tom Blumer cries foul at the AP’s proposed procedure if their request for the death photos of Osama Bin Laden is fulfilled. AP’s Michael Oreskes has stated, in an interview with The Atlantic, that the AP will “decide what’s publishable and what’s not publishable based on the possibly (sic) that it’s inflammatory.” Blumer is rightfully confused; if the AP objects to the government withholding the pictures, why should they be able to choose what’s shown and what isn’t? Other considerations must enter the discussion, too, if I may inject my own opinion: what if the images are gruesome? Or too numerous to place in an article? The government should simply make the images available to all who want to see them.
Ontario Liberals ‘interfering’ with freedom of information: Opposition: And now for our dosage of foreign news: from the far white wastes of Ontario comes a new political controversy centering around impeded FOI requests. The New Democratic party, currently the opposition, filed a FOI request to discover how their other FOI requests had been handled—always a good idea for those of you taking notes on good requests to file—and discovered that requests from the opposition party were being flagged by Liberal staffers as “contentious”. The New Democrats argue that this indicates a politicization of the FOI process, which is death to fair practice. Liberal Finance Minister Dwight Duncan, however, asserts that the flagging “. . .has no bearing in law or regulation. We see hundreds of things every day and (it means) look at this carefully, it’s contentious, and that’s it.”
See you all next week with a full length FOIA Friday post, and remember: when your murderous, incestuous uncle-king invites you to duel someone. . . it’s probably not just because he wants to see you show off your swordplay.
May 06
Philip HalinUncategorized ACLU, Bin Laden, EFF, FBI, FOI, FOI Friday, FOIA, FOIA Friday, OBL, Osama
Apparently, my comment in the last FOIA Friday about April showers was presumptive, because at least here in Massachusetts they show no signs of leaving. Luckily for you, neither does FOIA Friday! Basically everything we’re looking at can be found here anytime you like, and if you have any suggestions, please do send them on over to tips@muckrock.com.
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.
May 02
Philip HalinUncategorized Australia, CREW, DoE, FOI, FOI Friday, FOIA, FOIA Friday, USEC
Editor’s note: Last week’s FOIA Friday was late through no fault of Philip’s, but due to MuckRock’s travel schedule and sojourn to Transparency Camp. We’ll be returning to our irregular broadcast scheduling presently. -MM
As April showers give way reluctantly to May weeds, the FOI requests don’t stop, and neither do we here at MuckRock. Most of the stuff we’re looking at can be found here anytime you like, and if you have any suggestions, please do send them on over to tips@muckrock.com.
Now to the news:
CREW Files FOIA Appeal Regarding Investigations of Rep. Mollohan: Our old friends at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington—who you may remember from last weeks’ FOIA Friday—are back with another FOI request. After Representative Alan Mollohan was connected to $250 million dollars in earmarks that benefited his campaign nonprofits, the DoJ launched a four-year investigation. In January 2010, they informed him that the investigation was at an end and he would not be prosecuted in spite of clear evidence of his culpability. CREW want to know why he was never punished by the government for his illicit dealings.
19 months and counting: The saga of an Energy Department FOIA request: From the American University School of Communication comes this saga of delays, redactions, and controversies. Author Sam Tranum filed a FOI request with the DoE 20 months ago, seeking information on a $2,000,000 grant sought by private company USEC Inc. from the DoE. After receiving overly-redacted information and lots of stonewalling, Tranum tried to submit a fresh request in order to re-enter the appeals period. However, because his first request is still stuck in pre-decision purgatory, his second request was not processed. As of now, Tranum has filed a request on all correspondence relating to his request and hopes to figure out what the department has been doing with its long delay time.
The Curious Case of Cam Davis: In Cary, Illinois, a longtime village administrator, Cameron Davis, has left the service of the village in a manner that suggest he was ousted without being fired. Don’t pity the man yet, however, as a FOI request by reporter Katie Anderson reveals that Davis will pocket $123,000 and free healthcare for a year after leaving his job. The circumstances of Davis’ departure, as well as that pesky dollar amount, are causing controversy in Cary.
Big Tobacco wields FOI docs against Labor: We round out this FOIA Friday with some international FOI news, this time from the land down under, where the Labor government is seeking to legislate plain packaging for all cigarettes. British American Tobacco Australia (BATA), in an effort to fight back, has filed upwards of 19 requests for various documents and records. Some of the records they’ve received, they argue, show that the proposed legislation would damage the trademark rights of the tobacco companies. More important to their case is the argument that no public benefit is served by plain packaging, an argument BATA hopes will be bolstered by documents currently withheld by the Australian government.
Apr 22
Philip HalinUncategorized DoJ, Eric Holder, FOI, FOI Friday, FOIA, FOIA Friday, Healthcare, Michigan
Happy Good Friday to everyone! This Friday is especially good because not only do you have the holiday, but there’s also another FOI Friday for you. Most of the stuff we’re looking at can be found here anytime you like, and if you have any suggestions, please send them on over to tips@muckrock.com.
Now to the news:
MI State Police: We have nothing to hide: After reports began to circulate in Michigan that police were downloading the full phone records (including texts, e-mails, etc.) of people pulled over in simple traffic stops, the Michigan branch of the ACLU got involved. They submitted their initial FOI request for the records in August of 2008 and were told that the cost of disassembling and disclosing information on five of the devices supposedly used illegally during the stops would cost upwards of $500,000, and the ACLU was told they needed to pay a $272,340 deposit before receiving any documents. Attempts to narrow the request to avoid such exorbitant fees were met with claims that no such records existed. The MI state police department claims that not only do they not use the devices the UCLA claims they do, but also that they had worked with the ACLU to try and lower the fees for the FOI request. The dispute is ongoing.
CREW Files FOIA Request With Secret Service for Records of Health Care Execs White House Visits: Seeking to identify how much, if any, influence healthcare executives had on the design of the “Obamacare” bill, CREW (Citizens for Ethics in Washington) have filed a FOIA request for the records of all visits to Obama by the aforementioned executives. While the president’s administration holds that the records are not subject to FOI laws, CREW is optimistic that the Secret Service will release the information.
General Who Resigned After Abu Ghraib Recruited For Senate Bid: Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez should be no stranger to controversial press, given his involvement as a commanding officer at Abu Ghraib prison. Now the report is that the Democratic party has been grooming him for a Senate run in a typically-conservative district. In spite of his claims to ignorance of the actions of his soldiers, Sanchez didn’t escape the Abu Ghraib hubbub smelling like a rose. According to the results of an ACLU FOI request in 2005, Sanchez issued orders to exploit the fear of dogs of “Arabs” in the prison, and several sources finger him as having been involved in the decision to torture the prisoners.
Bringing the outside in at Eric Holder’s Justice Department: After Attorney General Eric Holder announced a re-invigoration of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, a reasonable observer might expect a new era of equality and transparency. Instead, alleges J. Christian Adams at the Washington Examiner, Holder has ushered in an era of difficulty and political bias. The judges and lawyers hired by Holder’s Justice Department, says Adams, have been activists with extreme views on the issues they’ve been given influence over. Libertarian group Pajama Media filed a FOI request in the summer of 2010, asking for the resumes of all new DoJ hires. It has yet to be fulfilled, in contrast to an identical request that was responded to within three weeks by the Bush administration in 2007.
Mar 28
Philip HalinUncategorized Cambridge, CCTV, FOI, FOIA, Saul Tannenbaum, snow, Tannenbaum
Some of you may recognize the work of Saul Tannenbaum. He’s been writing for the NeighborMedia program at CCTV, which is their effort at civic journalism. While writing for CCTV (Cambridge Community Television), he filed a series of FOI requests and unearthed loads of information on the locations and fines attached to sidewalk-clearing violations during the Snowpacalypse this past winter, which he then helpfully mapped.
While the map that laid out the violations across Cambridge has been what’s gotten the most attention, Saul himself is focusing more on what his investigation reveals about Cambridge’s snow removal tracking system as a whole. To him, there were two crucial things revealed by his requests.
The good news, says Tannenbaum, is that “the time it took for Cambridge to close a complaint (that is, send an inspector and record an outcome), decreased dramatically over time. They got much better at it.” This bodes well for the future management of snowstorms like the series we saw the past four months or so. In his followup article—posted after our interview—he put up a graph showing that for the month of January, the time it took to close a complaint dropped each week, before spiking in the beginning of February. It then settled back into a pattern of decreasing every week. On the other hand, though, Tannenbaum points out that “the internal IT systems used to support this effort aren’t really very good. There are separate systems for complaints and violations, and the inspectors need to copy data from one to the other.” Not only that, but “the web reporting form for complaints is primitive and buggy.”
How did Saul Tannenbaum, a recently-retired IT Architecture and Planning employee for a local university, become the champion of everyone to ever slip on the sidewalk in front of a neighbor’s house and wonder if they were fined for not clearing it? “My first request was almost by accident,” says Tannenbaum, who had simply asked Cambridge’s Public Works Commissioner about who he should request the snow information from as part of a larger conversation. Lisa Peterson, the Commissioner, responded that “she said it was her and that she’d start working on my request,” and just like that he had filed his first request without even intending to.
His second request, which asked for even more data, took longer to get a response to, given that he filed it during the most busy snowy period of the year, meaning the Department of Public Works was quite busy. After that request was fulfilled, Tannenbaum put in a request for more up-to-date data for snow violations. This one, however, was ironically bogged down by a City Council attempt to create more transparency. You can read the full story here, but the gist is that the way the Council went about trying to facilitate Saul’s work ended up delaying it. All the same, Tannenbaum thinks he’s done at least some good by bringing the information that he has to light. As of his most recent posting, the City Council has indeed gotten the snow data from the DPW that had been impeded by their order released for public viewing here. His requests “caught the City Counci’ls attention, which is a good thing,” Tannenbaum remarks, “But how much effect that has on city processes is an open question.”
Over the next few months, Tannenbaum hopes to pursue information on all the FOI requests filed in the city of Cambridge, a pursuit he hopes will reveal successful methods of requesting.
Feb 18
Philip HalinUncategorized FOI, FOI Friday, FOIA, FOIA Friday, Metadata, MuckRock, Nepotism, VA, Virginia
We here at MuckRock are always keeping our eyes and ears open for interesting applications of FOI laws, potential FOI filings, and the use of FOI-acquired information. All of the stuff we’re looking at can be found here anytime you like, and if you have any suggestions, please send them on over to tips@muckrock.com.
Now to the news:
Prince William Seeks Investigation of ICE: The supervisors of Prince William County, VA, are considering litigation against DHS after the department failed to respond to their FOI request of over a year ago, wherein they requested information of how ICE has been handling the almost 3,000 illegal immigrants that the county has reported. More specifically, the county also sought information on why one Carlos A. Martinelly-Montano, an illegal immigrant with a long criminal record, was still a resident of the county despite being reported to ICE. As the request was not fulfilled, county officials are considering asking Congress to look in to DHS’ handling of illegal immigrants.
Loose Lips Daily: Give My Kid A Job Edition: A FOI request by American University radio (WAMU)’s Patrick Madden reveals that DC mayor Vince Gray’s administration has just hired the children of two of his closest advisors: his best friend Lorraine Greene and his new chief of staff Geri Mason Hall. While there is no evidence of nepotism—which is governed severely in DC—the city is supposedly in a hiring freeze and running low on money, and these hirings of close friends of the mayor are at least a little suspicious.
Federal judge orders release of document metadata: The Reporters’ Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) reports that a New York State federal judge has ordered that the metadata—”information related to the history, tracking or management of an electronic document”—of government documents must be released under FOI requests. The ruling came in response to ICE’s release of an unsearchable PDF to the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, which had requested the electronic documents in their “native formats”. The court ruled, in part, that “metadata maintained by the agency as a part of an electronic record is presumptively producible under FOIA, unless the agency demonstrates that such metadata is not ‘readily producible,’” a decision that the U.S. Attorney has declined to comment on.
A Condensed User Guide for FOIA Requests: Unredacted, a blog that analyzes and makes more clear information from the National Security Archive (NSA), has released this simple, useful guide for filing your own FOI requests. With plenty of links to other guides—primarily the NSA’s—this informative blog post is useful for anyone with questions about the FOIA process.
Oct 27
Michael MorisyUncategorized FOI, FOI Deadlines, FOIA, Site Features
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
-Douglas Adams
When it comes to FOI-jitsu, deadline mastery nearly tops the list when it comes to important skills. It’s one of the things we really liked about MuckRock: Computers are really, really good at keeping track of dates. People, on the other hand, are all over the map (P.S.: Mom called with a gentle reminder that Mother’s Day is just 192 shopping days away!). So helping you keep track of the dates a request was filed, updated, and answered are things we’d like to make sure we’re getting right.
We still have a bit to go, as one user recently pointed out. Currently, we hand enter submission dates and due dates based on our best guesses. For Massachusetts requests, we try and mark the “Due Date” as 10 business days after the request is actually filed. For Federal requests, we mark it 20 days. That’s something of a simplification, though, since we’re not really right now at tracking holidays, which can also push back deadlines, or knowing the exact date the request was received (a frustrating number of agencies still accept only snail mail, which can take 2 – 5 days).
We also don’t typically “pause” deadlines, even when the agency requests extra time. Under national FOIA laws, for example, “unusual circumstances” can merit a request taking 10 extra days. Some agencies have backlogs of months. None of this is reflected in our color-coded status tracker, which just marks things as late when they’re past their original due date. That’s not quite fair to the agency, but users can always quickly see when and where updates happened by simply clicking on the request itself, where each message is logged.
We’re currently working on better handling this (remember, computers are better than humans when it comes to dates!), but in the meantime, we’d like your feedback on how you think we should handle it. In the meantime, if getting this tracking feature right is important to you for a particular document, you can always just e-mail me at Michael@MuckRock.com and I can fix it up for you directly. If you have suggestions or just want to see more progress on it, go comment and vote in our feedback forum: We do listen!
Oct 25
Michael MorisyUncategorized Agency Voice, FOI, FOI Officers, FOIA
Last week, we took a look at the freedom of information process from a requestor’s point of view, and I thought it might be nice to turn the tables. This time, we”re looking at why some agencies insist on responding to requests for digital documents with piles of dead tree.
It’s a running joke among journalists: The pages and pages of e-mails, to take one example, that had been fought for through the “proper” Freedom of Information channels, and then finally won, only to have the government e-mails turned over not in nice electronic format, but rather as reams pieces of paper, delivered via the United States Postal service. If you’re the requester, this means request costs can add up quickly: That’s 50 cents a printed page in Massachusetts, plus the cost of the employee’s time.
Surely, this is how the government sticks it to some nosy beat reporter, right? It’s the same story told again and again: Perfectly good electronic documents are, instead of being delivered digitally, are printed out, occasionally rescanned, and only then handed over when they’ve lost their perfect text transcription, their searchability … and nearly every aspect that makes them convenient in fast-paced newsrooms and to the general public. It’s no surprise that the common wisdom is this process was developed by some loathsome public servants determined to nip transparency in the bud. The truth is, however, a little more complicated.
More
Sep 14
Michael MorisyUncategorized Bureaucracy, FOI
With Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, sometimes waiting is the hardest part (unless you get involved in litigation, massive print data dumps, arcane formats … well, OK, one of the hardest parts). That’s why each request you make is timestamped, color coded and tracked, leaving you to deal with only that 2% of time when something actually happens:
But just because something stays green (or even stays red) doesn’t mean nothing is happening; just nothing you need to worry about. For example, many agencies, swamped (or at least claiming to be swamped) with FOI requests file a provisionary note, telling you that they’ve received your request and our working on it. We’ve received two such reqeusts recently:
From the Federal Bureau of Prisons (original request):
The Federal Bureau of Prisons is in receipt of your Freedom of Information Act/Privacy Act request. It has been assigned a number which you will find above. Please make a note of it as you will need to include it in any correspondence or inquiry regarding your request.
Due to the large number of requests received by the Bureau of Prisons for disclosure of records pursuant to the Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, and due to the limited resources available to process such requests, the Bureau of Prisons has adopted a first-in/first-out practice of processing all incoming requests.
From the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department (original request):
This letter will confirm receipt on August 19 of your letter seeking disclosure of public records maintained by the Suffolk County Sheriff ’s Department (“Department”), and it has been forwarded to to me for a response. Your request specifically seeks the disclosure of all written documentation or policy guidelines on preventing inmate self- injury and/or suicide, including policies on contraband, qualifications for suicide watch and suicide watch policies and procedures. ‘
Please note that I am currently determining which documents are responsive to your request.
Neither request is, yet, what we’d call a rousing success, and the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department is now almost two weeks late, but at least both agencies gave us a heads up. Now, it’s just time to wait them out, sending them the occasional “ping” update and shaming them by pointing out that, currently, the Suffolk request is the third-longest overdue request we have.
Aug 16
Michael MorisyUncategorized FOI, MuckRock
The mission of MuckRock is to make it as simple as possible to file your freedom of information requests, and we’ve been working hard to make it easier than ever to navigate creating, tracking and sharing your requests. We have big announcements coming up soon on the “sharing” front, but right now, we wanted to give you a better look at the “creating” portion: We’ve broken the wizard down into tabbed categories with better descriptions helping you figure out exactly what kind of request you need to make to get the information you want.
You can also see a progress bar up top that shows you how far you are along in actually getting that request finished up. You’ll actually find a similar progress bar on all request pages now (see here for a sample). That gives you a quick, visual way to see how far along your request is: Whether it’s waiting for a response, hasn’t been sent out yet, or is even still just a draft in your inbox. There’s also a new color-coding system for tracking these responses, so that if a response is coded green, everything’s smooth sailing; if it’s coded red, the request has been denied, the government has failed to respond within the statutory limits, or something else has gone wrong; and if it’s coded yellow, a user response is needed, such as finishing up a draft or OK’ing some proposed compromise that the government agency is requesting. You can even quickly see the status of all current requests with this system on the FOI request homepage, which is right now almost entirely green.
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