So Gov. Walker got FOIA’d a bunch . Really? Who would have thunk it? The firestorm of debate ignited by Gov. Scott Walker’s changes to collective bargaining rules last year also triggered an explosion of requests for public information from his office. The office received 214 written requests during 2011, some three times more than [...]
Filed under: 1. Records that matter | Tagged: Freedom of Information Act, Scott Walker, Wisconsin | Leave a Comment »
A huge week for federal FOIA, and the federal judiciary getting it right…. The U.S. Justice Department has lost three significant court rulings over records sought by the public under the Freedom of Information Act, including a rare order to release a classified document. The rulings have been issued recently by judges in federal district [...]
Filed under: 3. Access law | Tagged: Center for International Environmental Law, Classified information, Free Trade Area of the Americas, Freedom of Information Act, Office of the United States Trade Representative, United States Department of Justice | Leave a Comment »
In case you missed it, The New York Times had a really interesting piece on FOIA the other day. The money graf: On Jan. 4, The New York Times received a final response from the Defense Department to a FOIA request made on June 1, 1997. The department sent it by Federal Express, Priority Overnight. [...]
Filed under: 3. Access law, 6. Overcoming denials | Tagged: Freedom of Information Act, June 1 1997, New York Times | Leave a Comment »
Judicial Watch, the organization that investigates and fights government corruption, announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit on January 3, 2012, against the Obama Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to obtain documents pertaining to accusations of fraud against the nation’s five largest mortgage companies [...]
Filed under: 3. Access law | Tagged: Freedom of Information Act, JudicialWatch, Obama administration, United States Department of Justice | 3 Comments »
A solid ruling on White House visitor records, at last. A recent Obama appointee to the federal bench, at that…note that Judicial Watch was suing the Obama folks to make legally binding a policy the White House was claiming it was doing voluntarily. If only this had been handed down, say, any time in American [...]
Filed under: 1. Records that matter, 3. Access law | Tagged: Freedom of Information Act, Judicial Watch, visitor records, White House | 2 Comments »
A nice blog post by the Atlantic lists the known FOI requests for the Osama bin Laden pics. It would be interesting, in a few months, to FOIA the FOI log and see the final tally…. Thus far, it looks like the AP, Politico, Fox News (maybe), Judicial Watch and Citizens United. Interesting bedfellows…. cd
Filed under: 1. Records that matter, 2. Doc state of mind, 6. Overcoming denials | Tagged: Freedom of Information Act, Osama bin Laden | Leave a Comment »
Another day, another take on the UW-Madison e-mail saga. Here is a critical graf: The tumult and the shouting have also obscured a second crucial point, that Freedom of Information Acts, as Cronon himself states, are precious tools of American democracy. And anyone, as the Republicans claim, has the right to invoke them. But that [...]
Filed under: 1. Records that matter, 3. Access law, 7. Electronic records, 8. Officials' perspectives | Tagged: Freedom of Information Act, University of Wisconsin–Madison | Leave a Comment »
Sorry it took me a day, but some reaction from Wednesday’s FOIA hearing: Republicans in Congress are airing results from one of their first formal investigations of the Obama administration, an inquiry into secretive reviews by political advisers at the Homeland Security Department of hundreds of Freedom of Information requests. The allegations by Republicans set [...]
Filed under: 3. Access law, 6. Overcoming denials, 7. Electronic records, 8. Officials' perspectives | Tagged: Darrell Issa, Freedom of Information Act, United States Department of Homeland Security | Leave a Comment »
Thanks to the Electronic Frontier Foundation for this…. Tomorrow the House Oversight Committee is holding a hearing titled, “Why Isn’t the Department of Homeland Security Meeting the President’s Standard on FOIA?” As we wrote last October, redacted DHS emails revealed the agency was targeting certain Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and certain FOIA requesters—such as activist [...]
Filed under: 1. Records that matter, 3. Access law, 7. Electronic records | Tagged: Electronic Frontier Foundation, Freedom of Information Act, United States Department of Homeland Security | 1 Comment »
Details about every new court challenge to the withholding of information by the Obama Administration are now available on a new website developed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). Designed to bring more transparency to FOIA withholding decisions, the new site — http://FOIAproject.org — gives the American people a way to track all instances in which a federal agency’s [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: digital transparency, Freedom of Information Act, online tools, Syracuse University | Leave a Comment »
