900 ISIS-related FBI inquiries
Asked by Emma North-Best on December 2, 2015.
5 answers from Jack R-W and Emma North-Best.
A New York Times article posted today said that “That case was just one of about 900 open inquiries that the F.B.I. director said were related to the Islamic State. Most of them have not become wide-ranging investigations, because they were generated by tips that were not substantiated. According to law enforcement officials, the F.B.I. typically has about 10,000 open counterterrorism inquiries.”
What’s a good way to get started on using FOIA to find out more about those cases? Indices and registries seem like a good place to start, but I’m not sure how to request those in a useful way. Those are also likely to have lots of exceptions related to privacy, national security and ongoing investigations. So records relating to statistics of it might be more likely to be released and provide as much useful information as redacted records of those inquiries.
Any thoughts or ideas about how to get started on it?
I forgot to include the link to the article. If it helps (or seems of interest), it’s posted at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/02/us/politics/56-arrests-in-us-this-year-related-to-isis-study-says.html?_r=0
Here’s the report referenced: https://cchs.gwu.edu/sites/cchs.gwu.edu/files/downloads/ISIS%20in%20America%20-%20Full%20Report.pdf
It includes names of people charged, etc. I’m not sure if it’s going to be a waste of time requesting records relating to them, or how the best way to do it would be.
Legal documents posted at http://cchs.gwu.edu/isis-in-america - is it worth requesting more?
Giving it a try with this: https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/isis-related-inquiry-index-22727/
Input welcome on how to refine that request, or ideas for other requests to help get at this information.
I’d suggest you’d have better luck working with court records through PACER. Any, as for the request: “Any registries, indexes or lists of ISIS-related inquiries.” is not good wording for a request like this. The FBI has a somewhat unique filing system that’s been frequently criticized
I’d suggest you’d have better luck working with court records through PACER. Any, as for the request: “Any registries, indexes or lists of ISIS-related inquiries.” is not good wording for a request like this. The FBI has a somewhat unique filing system that’s been frequently criticized, so you’d want something more specific. Anyway, none of that matters because they’re going to deny your request under either the privacy exemption, the ongoing investigation exemption, any of the various national security exemptions, or any number of other ones.