Less than two months before the deadline Amazon gave itself to announce its second headquarters location, a Pittsburgh judge decided the city’s #AmazonHQ2 proposal documents are not “trade secrets” protected from FOIA requests - a common exemption claimed by cities nationwide that have denied to release bid documents.

An Illinois Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Chicago-based Lucy Parsons Labs has led to the release of a “Best Practices and Training Guide” for the PredPol predictive policing software. The manual offers a rare look at how private companies are encouraging police to embrace algorithms as a means of seeking out crime before it happens.

In this week’s FOIA round-up, we’ve got dirt on a Federal Communications Commission cover-up effort, long-awaited Chicago stop-and-frisk data, copies of environmental policy executive orders sent to President Donald Trump by a major coal executive, and document devouring tips from a New York Times investigative reporter.

In the summer of 2017, the Chicago Police Department did something on social media that would usually be unremarkable: it changed its profile picture.

How do police officers lockdown their online presence? A document released by the Chicago Police Department to Lucy Parsons Labs provides clues.