Last weekend, an anonymously-attributed presentation entitled “FOIA Strategies and Tactics” started making the rounds in the #OpenGov community, offering something for beginners, veterans, and fans of vintage Tex Avery alike. While the whole thing’s worth a read, today we wanted to focus on the five points brought up in the presentation’s conclusion, as they address some often-overlooked elements of the whole FOIA process.

In the eerie depths of the Central Intelligence Agency’s declassified archives, a document came rapping, rapping at our browser window. “POEDGR,” the Agency’s computer-themed “The Raven” parody which might be the first poem to have its rhyme scheme thrown off by a FOIA exemption.

More than a year after Amazon released its HQ2 RFP and weeks after it announced the winners, a majority of #AmazonHQ2 bids submitted to the company are still not public. MuckRock and other news outlets obtained many of those that are through public records requests - we break down what has and hasn’t been released.

Back in December, we wrote about how MuckRock’s Mitchell Kotler used FOIA to get the Central Intelligence Agency to release a number of internal board games used for training exercises. Today we’re looking at another game in the series, which the Agency reproduced in full - “Kingpin: The Hunt for El Chapo.”

Earlier this year, Emma Best filed a Freedom of Information Act request for a copy of the Department of Defense’s most recent declassification guide, with the goal of better understanding what the Pentagon believes can or can’t be released to the public. Just this week, the guide came in but with one notable omission: the entire section on what the Pentagon believes can or can’t be released to the public