This week’s round-up: An FCC cover-up, checking out Chicago’s stop-and-frisk data, and how Big Coal shapes Trump’s environmental policies
In this week’s FOIA round-up, we’ve got dirt on a Federal Communications Commission cover-up effort, long-awaited Chicago stop-and-frisk data, copies of environmental policy executive orders sent to President Donald Trump by a major coal executive, and document devouring tips from a New York Times investigative reporter.
The nightmare fuel hidden in Richard Feynman’s FBI file
Two hundred pages into the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s copious file on the famed physicist Richard Feynman, and the reader is treated to a quite the surprise: A bizarre collage of what appears to be Feynman’s face alongside large swaths of redacted text, with a few cryptic phrases like “doubt everything” and “is a God” left intact. It is unclear if the redaction are original, or are the work of the FBI.
CIA archives offer a B-26-eye’s view of D-Day
A pair of stunning photographs unearthed in the Central Intelligence Agency’s archives depict the D-Day invasion from the perspective of the planes buzzing overhead. Remarkably, these photos were only declassified in 2013, just a year shy of the 70th anniversary of the Normandy landings.
One year into our project to track the extent of the rape kit backlog
Vanessa Nason, who runs our “Counting the Uncounted: The Sexual Assault Evidence Collection Kit Project,” reflects on a year spent tracking down the extent of the rape kit backlog in America.
Looking at the lead in Massachusetts schools: Part Two
As we wrote last week, the school districts of Attleboro, Brockton, Leicester, Middleborough, and Quincy, all found the highest levels of lead in their school buildings. Today, we’ll be taking a closer look at all of them.
Projects See all
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The Private Prison Project
★ Featured- Contribute
- 44% funded
- $4450.00 raised
- 109 backers
For-profit detention continues to reap the rewards of an incarceration system filled to the brim and facing an uncertain future. Our FOIA requests have released thousands of documents that show how for-profit prisons have leveraged the legal system to their advantage, letting companies pick-and-choose inmates to off-load costs, ignore complaints and concerns, and create dangerous conditions for prisoners and staff alike. This is all done while billions of taxpayer dollars are funneled into these private companies, which then pour millions into politicians' campaigns to keep their growth going. With your help, we can provide needed scrutiny of an industry few are even aware exists. -
Subjects Matter: FBI Files
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- 43% funded
- $2150.00 raised
- 19 backers
This project aims to sift through the hundreds of thousands of pages of FBI archival material we've released, so we can better understand why the Bureau had an eye on these people - and through that, better understand who they're keeping tabs on today. -
Counting the Uncounted: The Sexual Assault Evidence Collection Kit Project
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- 44% funded
- $1555.00 raised
- 22 backers
Despite an estimated 175,000 sexual assault evidence collection kits that sit untested in evidence rooms and crime labs across the country, there is no federal law in place mandating policies or testing of kits, and we don't know how many more go uncounted. This project aims to end that, one city and one kit at a time. -
FOIA 101: Tips and Tricks to Make You a Transparency Master
★ FeaturedWhether it's your first request or your first request *today,* it never hurts to go over the basics. MuckRock's compiled a lot of FOIA advice over the years, and with this project, it's all in one place.