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 this week’s top secrecy news.
Updates from the FOIA trenches
DHS demands proof of identity: Earlier this year, I sent a Freedom of Information Act request to Customs and Border Protection for a March travel advisory informing senior officials that they couldn’t attend events hosted by organizations that support women or minorities.
All in all, a very simple request.
But this week, the Department of Homeland Security told me that, because I’d asked for records about myself, they were closing my FOIA and forcing me to resubmit with proof of identity.
Since I was seeking a copy of a travel advisory and not records about myself, this made no sense.
To make matters worse, the letter offered no appeal rights or point of contact if I disagreed with the determination.
Luckily I had a workaround; I found CBP’s FOIA liaison contact info on their website ([email protected]), told them to fix their mistake, and they quickly reopened the request.
Is it possible someone just clicked the wrong button when processing my request? Yes. Is it also possible this is a wider tactic DHS is using to close as many requests as possible? Also yes.
State Department using FOIA’s privacy exemption as a secrecy shroud: In June, FPF filed a FOIA lawsuit against the State Department seeking potentially damning evidence about the arrest of Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk for exercising her constitutionally protected right to free speech.
The government just responded to our suit, saying that it wouldn’t release any information because doing so would, among other things, be an invasion of privacy.
Yes, there are legitimate reasons to shield personal information from public disclosure. But the records we seek don’t threaten anyone’s privacy — they undermine the government’s charges that Öztürk supported terrorist organizations and engaged in antisemitic activities.
The government’s position is doubly insulting considering that by sending Öztürk to a detention center in Louisiana for a month and a half, it has already committed the most grievous privacy violation.
We’ll keep fighting.
DHS is either lying to NYT or to FOIA requesters, or both
The Department of Homeland Security told watchdog organization American Oversight that it has not saved text messages since April and that it has no way to search for them in response to FOIA requests. The remarkable admission came in response to a request for agency records about the deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles — and violates the Federal Records Act and guidance that says text messages must be saved.
DHS tried to backtrack after the story ran in The New York Times and said it has been keeping text messages after all but offered no explanation about why it told American Oversight something different and didn’t release any of the texts.
This means that DHS either lied to a FOIA requester and only recanted when it got called out by the Times, or it is now also lying to the Times.
Government secrecy thrives in news deserts
States with more newspapers and stronger press associations are more likely to respond to records requests, and states with fewer papers are more likely to ignore them, according to a new study from the Brechner Center for the Advancement of the First Amendment at the University of Florida.
Troublingly, there are 3,300 fewer newspapers across the U.S. and 45,000 fewer journalists than there were in 2005, which means more secrecy across the country.
“Government officials see that journalists are hurting, and they’re taking advantage of that,” said David Cuillier, director of the Brechner Center.
What I'm Reading
How journalists can use arrest data to cover the federal takeover of D.C. law enforcement
Media attorney and D.C. Open Government Coalition board member Robert Becker provides a road map for how to access important records on the federal takeover of Washington, specifically D.C. arrest records, here.
Newly released Epstein files fall short of full transparency, Democrats say
The Justice Department’s initial release of 33,000 pages of Epstein records to the House Oversight Committee consisted primarily of records that had already been disclosed by the department and other agencies. The one exception is nearly 1,000 pages of Customs and Border Protection records detailing Epstein’s flight patterns.
How the national security bureaucracy blocked Reagan’s ballistic missile ban
Newly declassified records show how the CIA and the Pentagon fought against President Ronald Reagan’s efforts to ban all ballistic missiles (don’t give the Reagan administration too much credit — the ban was conceived in part to trump any of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s disarmament proposals). The records were declassified as part of the State Department’s Foreign Relations of the United States series. Check out all of the FRUS editions here.
Transparently yours,
Lauren Harper
Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy
Freedom of the Press Foundation
