Biden’s legacy: Leaving FOIA in shambles
AP Illustration
The Freedom of Information Act gives the public a right to access government records.
The Freedom of Information Act is supposed to shed light on government activity by giving journalists and the public access to government records. But the law is in shambles. From endless delays in response time and unjustified refusals to ridiculously overbroad redactions, FOIA is plagued with problems.
We must fight back against the government’s refusal to comply with FOIA and urge Congress to reform the law and end backlogs of requests, reduce the number of exemptions, and overturn damaging court decisions.
Featured Items
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NSA Refuses to Confirm or Deny Whether It Has Documents on Spy Program It Already Talked About
I’m getting a kick out of the letters the National Security Agency (NSA) has been sending me in response to my Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.A couple of weeks ago, the NSA refused to release 156 pages of draft talking points the agency created in the wake of …
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This Method is So Constitutional, the DEA Won't Even Release Its Name
Training documents released to MuckRock user C.J. Ciaramella by the Drug Enforcement Administration provide unprecedented details on the tactic known as “parallel construction,” by which agents reverse engineer evidence to hide surveillance programs from defense teams, prosecutors and a public wary of domestic intelligence practices. But the DEA redacted all …
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NSA Sees "Grave Damage" to National Security If Draft Talking Points on Surveillance Released
The National Security Agency appears to have spent a lot of time trying to agree on a set of talking points agency officials could use to respond to revelations that originated with Edward Snowden about the lawfulness of the agency’s classified surveillance programs. Indeed, last October, I filed a Freedom …
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DOJ: Feinstein’s Committee Controls Torture Report; Has Final Say Over Public Release
A report completed more than a year ago by a Senate panel that investigated the CIA’s torture program can only be released by the committee, which maintains complete "control” over the highly classified document, the Justice Department said in a court filing late Friday. The Justice Department made that claim …
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Remembering Aaron Swartz, Who Passed Away One Year Ago Today
Aaron Swartz, the brilliant technologist and transparency activist, tragically passed away one year ago today. He was just 26. In his short lifetime, Aaron accomplished so much in pursuit of a free and open Internet that his acolades are almost too numerous to mention. He was critical in the launch …
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EXCLUSIVE: Clapper Memo Reveals Rationale Behind NSA Review Group Secrecy
<!--//--><![CDATA[// ><!-- DV.load("//www.documentcloud.org/documents/808719-clapper-memo-exempting-nsa-review-group-from-faca.js", { width: 600, height: 600, sidebar: false, text: false, pdf: false, page: 2, container: "#DV-viewer-808719-clapper-memo-exempting-nsa-review-group-from-faca" }); //--><!]]> When President Obama announced last August that he would take steps to try and win back public confidence in the wake of a series of troubling disclosures by The Guardian …
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Freedom of Information Act Requests to the NSA Up Over 1000%
This blog post originally appeared on MuckRock, an open-government journalism organization that was one of Freedom of the Press Foundation's first beneficiaries. A veritable Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) frenzy ensued in 2013 following a series of leaks about NSA surveillance programs, recently released documents show. The emails were …
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NSA Claims No Audio, Transcripts or Notes From Official's Interview With Gellman, But Assertion Appears to Be Untrue
<!--//--><![CDATA[// ><!-- DV.load("//www.documentcloud.org/documents/797986-nsa-response-to-leopold-foia-for-interview-audio.js", { width: 600, height: 600, sidebar: false, text: false, pdf: false, container: "#DV-viewer-797986-nsa-response-to-leopold-foia-for-interview-audio" }); //--><!]]> Last month, Barton Gellman published an explosive story in the Washington Post about the NSA's widespread privacy violations, based on documents he obtained from whistleblower Edward Snowden. Gellman also wrote a companion …
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That Time DOJ's FOIA Cop Accused Me of Engaging in a Vast FOIA Conspiracy
The Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy (OIP) is the top cop that’s supposed to ensure all government agencies—including DOJ—comply with an important law: the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).OIP is also supposed to make sure all government agencies—including DOJ—have implemented President Barack Obama’s January 2009 FOIA memorandum …
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DHS Dumps 1,400 Pages of Heavily Redacted Records Related to Agency's Role in Drafting 2012 Counterterrorism Guidelines
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) just released 1,400 pages of emails and other internal records concerning the agency’s role in advising the Department of Justice and Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on changes made to the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) guidelines used to collect and retain data …
