What’s considered public record or not is not a new debate. But the increasing prevalence of social media use amongst government agencies and officials, such as Twitter, brings up a new debate: If you delete social media posts on an official account, is it a violation of public records laws?

Buzzfeed and Pacific Standard Magazine report on questionable meetings by the state of Missouri to acquire lethal injection drugs and industry groups influencing government officials regarding a bird species in peril. Plus, a tool often used in the movies for keeping people quiet can also serve as a method of redaction!

A deep dive into our archive of Federal Bureau of Investigation files released through FOIA reveal that radio and TV personality Casey Kasem - better known as the voice of Shaggy in Scooby Doo - involved the Bureau in his infamous feud with the band Negativlandhe threatened to sue them for releasing a track of recordings of him swearing.

In response to dwindling recruitment numbers in the ’60s, the Central Intelligence Agency adopted a more aggressive program to lure in the best and brightest from America’s college campuses. That increased visibility led to the Agency facing with heavy resistance from student protests, in the form of citizen’s arrests, paint-throwing, patriotic frat boys, and in one case, aggravated poetry.

In this week’s news, an increase in FOIA lawsuits last year, some cases to watch, the public records process in the Middle East, another award to nominate someone (or yourself) for, and proposals to improve FOIA administration.