FOIA 101: Tips and Tricks to Make You a Transparency Master
Basics / Intermediate/Advanced / Exemptions / Agency-Specific Advice / Topic-Specific Tips / Presidential Records / Student Resources / State Maps / Ongoing Series
Basics
Five tips for beginners
Fee categories
Leaks and FOIA FAQ
What’s considered a public record?
Intermediate/Advanced
Dealing with excessive redactions
FOIA inspiration from #IRE2017
How to get a faster FOIA response
Tips for better FOIA appeals
Searching for specific sections of records
What to do about “Still Interested” letters
What the 2016 FOIA reforms mean for requesters
Exemptions
Federal FOIA exemptions overview
The Glomar “neither confirm nor deny” exemption
Agency-Specific Advice
CIA
The ultimate guide to searching CIA’s declassified archives
Using exemption codes to find documents hidden in CREST
FBI
A FOIA beginner’s guide to requesting a FBI file
The #AppleVSFBI FOIA Primer
Getting your own FBI file
Telling the FBI where to search
NSA
A beginner’s guide to FOIA-ing the NSA
Topic Specific Tips
Autopsy reports
Environmental reports
The JFK assassination records
Immigration records
#NODAPL / pipeline records
Protest records
Private prison records
Presidential Records
Presidential records primer
Trump Administration records
White House’s FOIA exemption
White House visitor logs
Student Resources
College journalist’s FOIA guide
College sports records guide
FOIA 4 Kidz lesson plan
High school journalist’s FOIA guide
State Maps
Response deadline map
State by State records gude
Ongoing Series
#FOIAFriday Round-up
FOIA Slack Chats
Requester’s Voice interviews
Suggestion Form
Image via the National Archives Flickr
87 Articles
How to read an FBI file: A beginner’s guide
With the recent launch of both our book of Federal Bureau of Investigation files and a crowdsourced effort to analyze Ronald Reagan’s 30,000-page file, we thought it would be the perfect time to answer one of the most frequently asked questions we get here at MuckRock: How do you even begin to tackle these huge releases?
This week’s FOIA round-up: Trump’s family separation policy leaves a paper trail, and Orlando’s “bureaucratic inertia” stalled a life-saving response plan ahead of Pulse shooting
In this week’s FOIA round-up, public records confirm the Trump administration’s intentional policy of family separation and shine light on a stalled Orlando Fire Department policy that could have saved lives during the Pulse Nightclub shooting. In public records law news, a provision of a November ballot initiative could expose San Francisco’s lauded Sunshine Ordinance to lawmaker interference.
FOIA FAQ: Appealing fee categories and waivers
Crafting an appeal can be daunting, but the results are worth it. Here’s some quick tips on what you can do to get an agency to reconsider your fee category, which can result in drastically reduced costs.