Deleted Tweets on @US_Stratcom

Dear Freedom of Information Officer:

This is a request under the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”), 5 U.S.C. § 552, to the U.S. Strategic Command on my own behalf as a journalist and as an academic researcher.

Requested Records
There is now press coverage that substantiates the claim that the U.S. Strategic Command has engaged in deletion on its official Twitter account (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2019/01/01/us-military-tweets-then-deletes-new-years-eve-joke-about-dropping-bombs/).
I request all agency records from October 2009 to the present concerning Tweets deleted or drafted and not sent from the @US_Stratcom account associated with the U.S. Strategic Command.

I believe the records that I are located, inter alia, within agency headquarters, in email records, and in third-party platforms used to manage the Agency’s social media accounts.
The records I request include, but are not limited to:
1. Records of all tweets deleted by the Twitter handle associated with @US_Stratcom including:
a. Any tweets that were published on Twitter and subsequently deleted for any reason; and
b. Any tweets published by other accounts that were retweeted by @US_Stratcom and subsequently deleted for any reason.
2. Records of all tweets that have been kept in draft form beyond their expected date and time of publication, on Twitter or in a third-party social media management platform, for any reason.
3. Records related to the drafting or deletion of tweets, including:
a. Any correspondence or record of correspondence regarding the drafting or deletion of specific tweets
i. including correspondence sent through official government email addresses or messaging services; and
ii. including correspondence sent through private third-party services such as Gmail or Slack; and
iii. Including any messages, notes, or annotations created on a third-party social media management platform.
b. Documentation of the agency’s existing policy regarding the preservation and maintenance of tweets as per the Federal Records Act, and Federal Records Management Bulletin 2014-02 (available at https://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/bulletins/2014/2014-02.htm), which stated that “social media content may be a Federal record when the use of social media provides added functionality, such as enhanced searchability, opportunities for public comment, or other collaboration… A complete Federal record must have content, context, and structure along with associated metadata (e.g., author, date of creation). The complete record must be maintained to ensure reliability and authenticity.”
c. Any briefings, reports, memoranda, legal opinions, policy statements, or talking points used or disseminated within the Agency regarding the drafting or deletion of tweets.
I urge the U.S. Strategic Command to process this request consistent with “a general philosophy of full agency disclosure [under FOIA] unless information is exempted under clearly delineated statutory language,” United States Dep't of Def. v. Fed. Labor Relations Auth., 510 U.S. 487, 494 (1994), and the Justice Department’s policy directing a presumption of disclosure. See Dep’t of Justice Office of Information Policy, President Obama’s FOIA Memorandum and Attorney General Holder’s FOIA Guidelines: Creating a “New Era of Open Government” (2009), available at https://www.justice.gov/oip/blog/foia-post-2009-creating-new-era-open-government).

Request for Public Interest Fee Waiver
I request a waiver of fees because disclosure of the requested records is in the public interest. It “is likely to contribute significantly to the public understanding of the activities or operations of the government and is not primarily in the commercial interest of the requester.” 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(A)(iii).
First, the records concern the operations or activities of the government. Government social media accounts are used to disseminated information to the public, make official pronouncements, and generally serve as an important touch point for governments to receive public input. See Social Media Use by Governments: A Policy Primer to Discuss Trends, Identify Policy Opportunities and Guide Decision Makers, OECD Working Papers on Public Governance, available at https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/5jxrcmghmk0s-en. Social media use, including tweets posted by @US_Stratcom and then deleted, or never posted, is an important part of this activity.

Disclosure of the requested information is likely to contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of the government. Specifically, the requested records will reveal substantial new information about how the U.S. Strategic Command defines and manages tweets. They will allow the public to see what published messages have been rescinded and the process by which these public statements were retracted as compared to the processes employed by other agencies. For example, my research on the Twitter account of the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base revealed to the public that the account had systematically deleted controversial tweets. See Brady Dale, To What Extent is a Tweet a Federal Record?, TECHNICAL.LY BROOKLYN (October 24, 2017), (https://technical.ly/brooklyn/2017/10/24/muira-mccammon-talks-gitmo-radical-networks/).

Finally, the records are not primarily in my own commercial interest. I seek the requested information for newsgathering purposes, and expect to incorporate it into journalistic work product to be disseminated to the public, like those already produced. See Muira Mccammon, Trouble @JTFGTMO, SLATE (April 17, 2018), https://slate.com/technology/2018/04/why-did-the-joint-task-force-of-guantanamo-start-deleting-tweets.html; Muira Mccammon, Can They Really Delete That?, SLATE (April 17, 2018), https://slate.com/technology/2018/04/why-did-the-joint-task-force-of-guantanamo-start-deleting-tweets.html.
For the reasons above, I respectfully request that U.S. Strategic Command grant a public interest fee waiver for this request, and that all fees related to the search, review, and duplication of the requested records be waived. If the fees will not be waived, I agree to pay up to $100 for the processing of this request. If the estimated fees will exceed this limit, please inform me before you begin processing.

Request for “Educational Institution” Fee Status

I am a member of an educational or noncommercial scientific institution and do not seek the records requested for commercial use. Therefore, if the agency does not find that my request meets the standards required for a public interest fee waiver, I request that fees associated with the processing of my request be limited to reasonable duplication costs. 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(A)(ii)(II).

My work has been featured in publications including Slate and more. I have previously requested documents obtained via FOIA from a range of federal agencies and government officials regarding the deletion of tweets from official Twitter accounts. I used that information to write a series of articles outlining both how individual agencies decided whether or not to delete tweets and more broadly how the government regards Twitter statements. These articles have been published, disseminated, and further reported upon to a broad audience. See Muira Mccammon, Trouble @JTFGTMO, SLATE (April 17, 2018), https://slate.com/technology/2018/04/why-did-the-joint-task-force-of-guantanamo-start-deleting-tweets.html; Muira McCammon, Can They Really Delete That?, SLATE (April 17, 2018), https://slate.com/technology/2018/04/can-federal-agencies-really-just-delete-tweets.html.

Therefore, if this request is not classified as being in the public interest, I respectfully request to be classified as a “educational institution” requester for purposes of fee assessments.

***
I request that responsive electronic records be provided electronically in their native file format, if possible. See 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(3)(B). I further request that you provide an estimated date on which you will finish processing this request. See 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(6)(B).

Thank you for your consideration of this request. As per 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(6)(A)(i), I expect your determination on whether to comply with this request within twenty (20) days. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me at the email address listed below.

Yours,

Muira McCammon

Kendall,

I have filed hundreds of this same FOIA request over the past few years, and I can honestly say that your response has been the kindest and most comprehensive.

I appreciate your detailed message and will look forward to hearing from you in the future,

Muira

Kendall,
Let me tackle some of your points one by one. I’m writing in regards to my FOIA request 20-043.

I am a Ph.D. student at the Annenberg School for Communication, and I am writing my dissertation, in part, on communication and deletion practices of U.S. federal agencies. This research has, to date, been presented at the International Communication of Association’s annual conferences in Prague (2018) and Washington D.C. (2019)—in addition to many other more local conferences. If I had said this before to you, would that have helped (with regards to the ‘education’ category). I have also been granted over 350 emails and 36 records of deleted tweets from other federal agencies in sum to date. But I write frequently for the media, so I’m honestly fine being counted towards either category, as I don’t think it really makes much of a difference in how you proceed…does it?

I also want to respond to a few other points that you made in your message. You noted that you have only been using your Twitter account since 2016. I am a little confused by this—I had originally gone to @US_Stratcom and seen that the account had been created in October 2009, but upon you saying that you’ve only been using your Twitter account since 2016, I wanted to revisit that, so I went to the Wayback Machine. The Wayback Machine has 113 captures of the @US_Stratcom account since April 7, 2010. I’m including a link to one of their archived pages, as it demonstrates that @US_Stratcom was up and running in the early 2010s.

I study tweeting and deleting practices, and so I am interested in the tweet that was deleted, but I would add that I’m also interested in knowing about the history of the account since its initial use. Given this above evidence, I do not want to amend the date range. But, if you say that you all have been using your Twitter account since 2016, is it possible that these earlier tweets from 2010 for example were in fact deleted?

And thank you for looping in the OSD/JS FOIA office. Definitely understand that my request would touch on DoD’s Public Affairs etc. Very excited about those six pages of emails and all other records related to this request.

Thank you, Kendall. So again, to clarify, I very much do not want to amend my date range, because it would seem that the account has indeed been up and running since before 2016.

Happy to chat about this request further.

All my best,
Muira

Hi, Kendall,

Thanks for the follow up. I'm wondering if you can clarify how you generally ask members of academia to "provide proof that your request is on behalf of your school." Does it suffice to file the claim on academic letterhead? Do you require Ph.D. students to submit their doctoral dissertation proposals? Seems like a slippery slope and anecdotally am interested in understanding where and how you draw the line.

I'll look forward to getting clarification from the Public Affairs Office but will work through you on this, as that is a component of my academic research, taking this request through and via FOIA and subsequently through and via the FOIA request process. This standardized approach is part of my research methodology, though I do appreciate you sharing their contact information. That being said, I would assert most strongly that the PAO appears to be incorrect in their claim.

Looking forward to hearing from you further and thanks so much for the prompt response - your FOIA office seems to be way way way more on top of matters than so many others that I've been in touch with, and I appreciate that, truly.

Thank you again,
Muira

Kendall,

This is all makes sense, really appreciate you answering all my questions.

Thanks so much for your energy and efforts. And good luck with the move.

All my best,
Muira

Hi there, Kendall,

Did we ever get precise clarity on why there was a request to change my date range from October 2009 to January 2016?

Totally ok if we did not, but I just figured I'd check in and see if there was any additional information.

Otherwise, I'm fine just continuing to wait for the request to be processed, and thank you again for explaining everything so clearly.

In gratitude,

Muira

No problem at all, and hope you're recovering. Appreciate your assistance and thank you.

Hi, Kendall,

Would love a written response - apologies for the delay, but am OK talking as well.

Muira