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 | 1 Comment »
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 »
So, Professor Bill Cronon writes an Op-Ed for the New York Times about the several ways in which he believes that Scott Walker and the current leadership of the Republican Party in Wisconsin have departed not just from the longstanding culture of civility and good government in this state, but in fact from important traditions [...]
Filed under: 2. Doc state of mind, 3. Access law, 7. Electronic records, 8. Officials' perspectives | Tagged: American Legislative Exchange Council, Freedom of Information Act, William Cronon, Wisconsin | 7 Comments »
Sunshine Review leads these really great weekly #FOIAchat discussions on Twitter on freedom of information act issues. Our turnout includes open government advocates, public officials, and professional journalists. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ryan Gabrielson from California Watch will answer questions and speak on the topic “From Tip to Story: How to Write an Investigative Piece” this [...]
Filed under: 1. Records that matter, 2. Doc state of mind, 3. Access law, 5. Request strategies | Tagged: Freedom of Information Act, Ryan Gabrielson, Sunshine Review | Leave a Comment »
