DoD agreements with Whisper

MuckRock.Com
Mr. Michael Morisy
Dept MR 13859
Boston, MA 02205

Sent by electronic mail to: requests@muckrock.com

This is in response to your Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for Department of Defense records and contract with WhisperText, Inc., the company behind the app Whisper. Your request was received 17 Oct 2014 in this office and assigned FOIA case number 15-F-0178.

This office handles FOIA requests for the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Staff (OSD/JS) only. FOIA requests involving the search of offices outside of OSD/JS should be directed to the appropriate FOIA office. You may find links to the non-OSD/JS DoD FOIA requester services on our website at: http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/.

According to the FOIA's legislative history, a description would be sufficient if it enabled a professional employee of the agency who was familiar with the subject area of the request to locate the record with a reasonable amount of effort, and reasonably describes records if the agency is able to determine "precisely" what records are being requested.

Courts have identified at least three (3) ways in which a FOIA request can fail to reasonably describe the records sought:
1) the description may be too vague to allow the agency to determine precisely what records are being requested; an agency is not required to have clairvoyant capabilities to discover the requestor's need;
2) broad sweeping requests lacking specificity are insufficient; and,
3) even where a request sufficiently describes the records sought, an agency is not required to comply with a request so broad that it would impose an unreasonable burden upon the agency. An agency need not honor a request that requires an unreasonably burdensome search. The "reasonably describes" requirement exists because the FOIA was not intended to reduce government agencies to full-time investigators on behalf of requesters. As such, it is the requester's responsibility to frame requests with sufficient particularity to ensure the searches are not unreasonably burdensome, and to enable the searching agency to determine precisely what records are being requested.

We checked the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS)-NG), the current central repository of information on Federal contracting, and could not find a contract with WhisperText, Inc.

As you may or may not know, OSD/JS is not an intelligence agency. We suggest that you write to the National Security Agency, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and the Defense Information Systems Agency.

If you believe that OSD/JS holds records, please advise the office that holds the records within OSD and Joint Staff. If we do not hear from you by 24 Oct 14, we will believe you are no longer interested and close your request.

The action officer for this request, Mr. Curtis Gibbens, is copied on this email.

If you are not satisfied with this action, you may submit an administrative appeal to James Hogan, Defense Freedom of Information Policy Office, 1155 Defense Pentagon, Washington, DC 20301-1155. Your appeal should be postmarked within 60 calendar days of the date of this letter, should cite to case number 15-F-0178, and should be clearly marked "Freedom of Information Act Appeal."

Suzanne Council
Senior Advisor
Office of the Secretary of Defense and Joint Staff
Office of Freedom of Information
1155 Defense Pentagon
Washington, DC 20301-1155