Leak referrals and consultations (Department of Commerce)

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, I hereby request the following records:

Copies of documents, including but not limited to emails, memos, letters, reports, briefs and call logs, referring to, discussing or generated as a result of referrals to and consultations with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other components of the Department of Justice (Criminal Division, Civil Division, National Security Division, the Attorney General's office, etc.), regarding instances of unauthorized disclosures of information (AKA leaks) for investigation and/or prosecution between January 20, 1981 (or the date of creation of this agency, whichever came first) and the present.

I request "news media" status and a fee waiver, see attached.

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 20 business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

Emma Best

Yes I am still interested in this and every other FOIA request I have filed with your agency. Proceed with their processing.

I am appealing the rejection of this, as I did respond within the time frame. This is reflected on https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/leak-referrals-and-consultations-department-of-commerce-74147/

The request is described adequately, and if it were not the agency would have communicated that in the past four years or in our previous communications and negotiations, or within the statutory time limits for the agency's response. Further, while "[w]henever
possible, a request should include specific information about each record sought, such as the date, title or name, author, recipient, or reference number and the name and location of the office where the record(s) might be found," requests may not be rejected simply for not describing records in those terms. The records were, in fact, described in more than adequate terms for a search to be calculated and conducted with a reasonable amount of effort, which in this case would involve email searches, consultations with the legal and external affairs departments, etc.

However, you will notice that you requested I provide several key pieces of information to allow you to perform the search. The first piece of information you identified was the date of records requested. The original request clearly identified the date range. You also requested I identify the recipient. The original request clearly identified the recipients of the documents et al.

This standard has been upheld both by other agencies and by the courts, and your failure to bring up the alleged problem in more than four years (you may be surprised to learn that the law allows you 20 business days, not 20 business years) only serves to further demonstrate that this is not a real problem with the FOIA, but is merely another attempt to close it without processing it, similar to your treatment of the request in 2020. No, the request is more than adequately described

I am not required to provide them to you. You are required, by case law, to reasonably calculate what offices are best searched and what employees are best contacted. I provided several suggestions, but the burden is not on me. And once again, asserting that it is after 4 more than years is beyond inappropriate. 15 C.F.R. § 4.4(c) does not require that I provide every field of information that your office can name, and no interpretation of 15 C.F.R. § 4.4(c) has ever been upheld by the courts that found that it did require that.