Dear Friend of Press Freedom,
I’m Lauren Harper, the first Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy at Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), and welcome to The Classifieds. Read on to learn about the week’s top secrecy news.
The $2.5 million FOIA request
What’s a reasonable fee for a local police department to charge a journalist asking for records about a single cop?
If you guessed anything lower than $2.5 million, you’d be wrong — at least according to the city of Eugene, Oregon.
In August, the nonprofit news outlet Double Sided Media filed a public records request with the city regarding police officer Justin Peckels, focusing specifically on potential misconduct between 2018 and 2026. Peckels has been the subject of community complaints, including one for punching a resident in the face, making the records important for oversight, and their release clearly in the public interest.
The city’s response is unbelievable. It estimated that searching for records and processing the request would take at least 44,816 hours of staff time and cost $2,484,599.04. (A separate request by the outlet for similar records concerning a former police officer, Eric Klinko, received a comparatively modest estimate of $195,869.52.)
Either Peckels’ file is the world’s largest, or city officials have intentionally maintained their databases in such a way as to ensure that fulfilling public records requests is prohibitively expensive.
Troublingly, Eugene’s $2.5 million fee estimate is not an anomaly.
Trump may be serious about declassifying UFO information
President Donald Trump might be serious about declassifying government secrets on UFOs.
A new Politico Magazine piece about the science council Trump has tasked with assessing the government’s data on UFOs, which is chaired by Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, suggests Trump’s interest in declassifying UFO information may be more substantive than his previous declassification initiatives. (A 2023 law already requires agencies to review their UFO files for declassification, but executive pressure could help force agency compliance.)
There’s understandable skepticism about Trump’s efforts. But even with a healthy dose of doubt, it’s still worth encouraging the administration to take these efforts seriously, for two major reasons.
First, unexplained incursions into military airspace are a genuine national security concern. Second, building a declassification model that successfully forces agencies to release sensitive UFO records could be applied to all classified records. But for it to work, the model likely needs to remove declassification decisions from agency hands. We have a few models for this:
- The JFK Assassination Records Review Board: Established in 1992, this independent citizen panel had the power to overrule agency secrecy designations.
- The Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel: This interagency panel, housed at the National Archives, overrules initial agency secrecy decisions over 75% of the time.
If we learn from these efforts and establish a new process for releasing UFO records, we can then apply that model to every secret in Washington.
What I’m reading
Judge questions secrecy around Trump administration’s memo on boat strikes
The legal rationale behind killing people shouldn’t be a secret. This FOIA ruling, which rejects the government’s invocation of the deliberative process and exemptions for attorney-client privilege, is a step in the right direction. But hurdles to disclosure — and accountability — remain.
Data from 911 calls at ICE detention centers must be disclosed under new California law
A California bill has been signed into law that will require local agencies to release 911 call records and other emergency dispatches from ICE facilities, which will help shed light on how ICE is treating the people it holds.
The government is enlisting AI to help decide what public records you get to see
Would you trust a government agency’s AI program to redact your records? Pretty soon, you may not have a choice.
Agencies largely stonewall GAO on audit of DOGE’s data practices
A recent Government Accountability Office audit attempting to identify how much access Department of Government Efficiency teams had to agency data was marred by agencies’ reluctance — and in some cases, outright refusal — to share information with the watchdog.
Transparently yours,
Lauren Harper
Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy
Freedom of the Press Foundation
