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FOIA

‘What Is The FCC Hiding?’ As Net Neutrality Deadline Looms, Agency Refuses FOIA Requests For Crucial Records

December 6, 2018 By Jake Johnson, Commondreams.org , ,
"Something here is rotten—and it's time for the FCC to come clean. Regrettably, this agency will not do this on its own. So it falls to those who seek to investigate from outside its walls." Just days before the Dec. 10 deadline for the House to pass a resolution to restore net neutrality protections, the Republican-controlled FCC on Monday rejected Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by the New York Times and Buzzfeed for server logs and other records pertaining to the millions of fake comments that flooded the agency's system as it moved to repeal net neutrality last year.

TSA Sued Over Searches Of Digital Devices

March 16, 2018 Staff, Aclunc.org , , , ,
The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit today demanding government documents about Transportation Security Administration (TSA) searches of electronic devices belonging to people traveling on domestic flights. “The federal government’s policies on searching the phones, laptops, and tablets of domestic air passengers remain shrouded in secrecy,” said Vasudha Talla, Staff Attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Northern California. The lawsuit seeks records from the TSA field office in San Francisco, California and the TSA headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. In particular, the lawsuit seeks records related to policies, procedures, or protocols regarding the search of passengers’ electronic devices; equipment used to search, examine, or extract data from passengers’ devices...

Government Secrecy On Rise, Sets Record For FOIA Denials

March 14, 2018 Ted Bridis, Apnews.com , ,
WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal government censored, withheld or said it couldn’t find records sought by citizens, journalists and others more often last year than at any point in the past decade, according to an Associated Press analysis of new data. The calculations cover eight months under President Donald Trump, the first hints about how his administration complies with the Freedom of Information Act. The surge of people who sought records but ended up empty-handed was driven by the government saying more than ever it could not find a single page of requested files and asserting in other cases that it would be illegal under U.S. laws to release the information. People who asked for records under the Freedom of Information Act received censored files or nothing in 78 percent of 823,222 requests, a record over the past decade.

FOIA Lawsuits Surge In Trump Administration’s First Year

January 20, 2018 Staff, Foiaproject.org , ,
Since the new administration took office at the end of January 2017, there has been a sharp jump in the number of lawsuits filed by individuals and organizations seeking court orders to obtain federal government records.[1] Suits brought by the news media and nonprofit advocacy organizations have fueled a significant part of this rise. Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), requesters can file suit when information they are seeking is withheld and they have exhausted administrative appeals, or when the agency fails to even respond in a timely manner. Lawsuits this past fiscal year rose an astonishing 26 percent, and are continuing to climb. FOIA court cases are now up over 70 percent from just five years ago.

Could FOIA Force Trump Administration To Restore Missing Climate Data?

May 11, 2017 Nicholas Kusnetz, www.insideclimatenews.org , ,
By Nicholas Kusnetz for Inside Climate News - As Donald Trump's administration continues to strip climate change information from federal websites, two advocacy groups and a conservation biologist are using a novel technique to try to force the government to republish the pages. A new provision in open records law, added by Congress last year, requires agencies to publish electronically any information that is requested at least three times through the federal Freedom of Information Act, so long as that information is not otherwise exempt from disclosure. Last week, the advocacy groups and the biologist submitted identical requests for climate change information, hoping to trigger that provision, and they just might succeed. "The law is pretty explicit," said Aaron Mackey, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes transparency. "The law just says, if you get three, then you have to affirmatively disclose it. This should work." The effort by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Center for Media and Democracy, and Stuart Pimm, a professor at Duke University...

Monsanto And Its Promoters vs. Freedom Of Information

October 4, 2015 Ralph Nader, www.blog.nader.org , , , ,
By Ralph Nader for The Nader Page - As the FOIA approaches its 50th year, it faces a disturbing backlash from scientists tied to the agrichemical company Monsanto and its allies. Here are some examples. On March 9th, three former presidents of the American Association for the Advancement of Science – all with ties to Monsanto or the biotech industry – wrote in the pages of the Guardian to criticize the use of the state FOIA laws to investigate taxpayer-funded scientists who vocally defend Monsanto, the agrichemical industry, their pesticides, and genetically engineered food. They called the FOIAs an “organized attack on science.” The super-secretive Monsanto has stated, regarding the FOIAs, that “agenda-driven groups often take individual documents or quotes out of context in an attempt to distort the facts, advance their agenda, and stop legitimate research.” Food safety, public health, the commercialization of public universities, corporate control of science, and the research produced by taxpayer-funded scientists to promote commercial products are all appropriate subjects for FOIA requests.

Obama Admin Sets Record (Again) For Most FOIA Requests Denied

March 20, 2015 Ted Bridis, www.ap.org , , , ,
The Obama administration set a record again for censoring government files or outright denying access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, according to a new analysis of federal data by The Associated Press. The government took longer to turn over files when it provided any, said more regularly that it couldn't find documents and refused a record number of times to turn over files quickly that might be especially newsworthy. It also acknowledged in nearly 1 in 3 cases that its initial decisions to withhold or censor records were improper under the law — but only when it was challenged. Its backlog of unanswered requests at year's end grew remarkably by 55 percent to more than 200,000. It also cut by 375, or about 9 percent, the number of full-time employees across government paid to look for records. That was the fewest number of employees working on the issue in five years.
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