Cortland, New York, is a small city where nothing much happens. The newspaper is about ten pages long, and sometimes whole pages are devoted to not only their high school’s honor roll, but that of the next town over as well. But ten years ago, controversy struck, one with all the workings of a Lifetime teen drama: A number of kids were suspended from extracurricular activities for appearing in MySpace photos holding red cups. Parents and students rallied together and stood up against the administration, striking a blow for online privacy and varsity football.

A nearly five-year old request is put on hiatus while the most technically advanced fighting force in world takes on a malfunctioning external hard drive.

A handful of key disclosures in recent weeks shed new light on the FBI’s involvement in cell-site simulator deployments nationwide.

MuckRock has received a copy of “American Sniper” Chris Kyle’s military record, consisting of several glowing evaluations and his discharge papers.

The Massachusetts lottery last year distributed nearly $975 million in revenue to communities. Contributing to that sum, Keno remains a consistent draw in some communities, though the returns may not reflect the effort put in.

Presidents tend to be a bit different than most people, and appropriately enough, Presidential records are a bit different than most records. Here’s what to know before you FOIA a POTUS.

In that spirit of commiseration, MuckRock is proud to announce our partnership with EFF and the Sunlight Foundation for the first-annual “Foilies” Awards Gala during Sunshine Week in DC.

The FBI has flown unmanned aerial vehicles since at least 2005, and has fought in court for the past year and change to divulge as little information about them as possible. While the Bureau and its privacy overseers have released hundreds of heavily redacted pages, they have seemingly conflicting answers as to whether one crucial set of legally-mandated privacy documents even exists at all.

Five years ago today, MuckRock was born — or, at least, the domain was registered. Mitchell Kotler and I started with just an idea, an experiment: What if we built a website that let anyone ask a question to their government, and we helped them get an answer?

Months into a survey into what Massachusetts towns know about their natural gas leaks, Brookline is the first town to release substantive responsive documents. The results suggest that other towns should take notice.

Department guidelines established in 2012 allow officers to comb social networks for information and investigative leads, and even to adopt online aliases, given proper authorization and bookkeeping.

The DEA have responded a request for records related to the US’s involvement in the detention of Mexican drug lord Joaquin Guzman with a $1.4 million price tag. The seven-figure sum would need to be paid in full before the DEA would begin processing the request.

Emails obtained through a request to the Charlottesville Police department show University of Virginia president Teresa Sullivan emailed shortly after Rolling Stone’s “A Rape on Campus,”, asking for an investigation into the assault described in the story.

As part of MuckRock’s ongoing Private Prisons project, Freedom of Information Act requests have been submitted to federal agencies for every one of their private facilities. Track them via our interactive map, and if you follow them from their request page, you’ll be updated when as documents come in.

Inspired by an earlier MuckRock article regarding marijuana citation data from California post-decriminalization, Evan Anderson decided to request the same information from several different states to see what comparisons he could draw.

One big takeaway: Florida is decidedly not 420 friendly.

Do private prisons “cherry pick” inmates, leaving state Corrections departments saddled with offenders in need of more expensive care? While it’s not quite selecting from a line up, they do set the guidelines for who’s in or out.

The North Carolina Attorney General has spoken: the state must, in fact, release data detailing which police departments received excess military equipment. The ruling reverses the position taken by state public safety officials that disclosing this information would be akin to publishing a blueprint for scofflaws.

In late 2013, MuckRock’s Shawn Musgrave requested a copy of the Air Force’s Cyber and Information Technology Research Investment report, which the agency was required to compile and submit to congress. Last March, that report came in, detailing where the Air Force wants its tech to be by 2025.

Starting on April 19, 1956, the federal government practiced and planned for a near-doomsday scenario known as Plan C. When activated, Plan C would have brought the United States under martial law, rounded up over ten thousand individuals connected to “subversive” organizations, implemented a censorship board, and prepared the country for life after nuclear attack.

Ask how many MQ-9 Reaper drones the US needs for pilot training, and the Air Force budget hawks charged with making that call have an exact figure at the ready: 52 unmanned aircraft, each at a sticker price north of $10 million and total operating cost upwards of $100 million over its lifetime. What sort of analysis did they preform to get at this specific number? According to recently released audit, none.

After initially claiming to be unable to locate any such document, the FBI now insists that it cannot release its comprehensive list of police departments across the country that use cell phone trackers.

MuckRock’s September request for complaints made to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) against Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) has so far yielded only four complete responses from OSHA’s ten regional offices. None of them mention interpersonal inmate issues but nonetheless they offer glimpses into what goes on within prison walls.

Back in September, MuckRock user Phil Mocek responded to a video of a black SUV allegedly hitting Ferguson protestors by filing for the incident report. Last Friday, as part of a larger document dump, that report came in.

In Massachusetts, a new law entitles municipalities to request utility companies’ gas line maps and gas leak inventories based on uniform standards, but few towns seem to be aware of the right. Check out our interactive map to see how Middlesex county responded, and help us file with the rest of the state.

The Bureau of Customs and Border Protection piloted its first drone along the Arizona-Mexico border in the summer of 2004. This Monday, over ten years after it’s initial launch, Department of Homeland Security Inspector General John Roth went on C-SPAN to lay out the reasons he considers CBP drones “dubious achievers” despite more than $60 million per year in annual funding. Here’s what happened in-between.