Exemption 10
No, government is not too open
Posted: March 13, 2016 | Tags: Sunshine Week, Transparency
Photo by Jeff Watts
Charles Lewis
Executive Editor Charles Lewis debated Stanford Professor Bruce Cain on March 15 at the University of Missouri about whether there is too much transparency — or not enough — in the federal government.
The event was digitally recorded and sponsored by the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute and the Harry S Truman School of Public Affairs.
Prior to the debate Lewis wrote the following:
The United States has a noisy and utterly imperfect representational democracy, disorderly and dysfunctional in many ways. But as Founding Father James Madison famously observed, “A popular Government, without popular information, or ...
iFOIA's new site features tracking
Posted: Nov. 6, 2013 | Tags: FOIA
iFOIA, a free online system to create, send and track federal and state records requests, is now up and running. After nearly a year of project development, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) offered iFOIA to Bloomberg News and NPR for beta testing. Since its official release at the Online News Association Conference on Oct. 17, major newsrooms, including The Washington Post, have hosted representatives from the Reporters Committee for tutorials on how this resource can be used effectively by journalists. Emily Grannis from the Reporters Committee stopped by the Workshop today to give our staff an ...
Privacy vs. the public's right to know
Posted: July 8, 2013 | Tags: FOIA
In an age of shrinking personal privacy, the federal government is relying more than ever on privacy concerns to deny access to government records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Private information found in personnel, medical or similiar files is one of nine exemptions that agencies can cite to deny or redact access to records. Private information found in law enforcement files is another. Yet the government must show that releasing the information would result in an “unwarranted” invasion of privacy. The Workshop’s analysis of annual FOIA reports show that federal agencies invoked one of the two privacy ...
Freedom of Information Act: Requests and denials climb, backlog slows
Posted: June 20, 2013 | Tags: FOIA
The federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) provides that government agency records are open to the public. Access can provide insight into such things as how taxpayer money is spent and what correspondence reveals about relationships between Congress and government agencies or between the agencies and private parties. However, this flow of information can be limited by nine exemptions, including those for national security, privacy and law enforcement reasons.
The data below show FOIA activity by year based on the reporting by 13 federal agencies, with the exception of requests to Veterans Affairs and the Health and Human Services departments ...
Agencies lag in filing FOIA reports
Posted: Feb. 27, 2013 | Tags: FOIA
In baseball, if you bat .333, you're an All-Star. But we’re pretty sure that doesn’t apply to most other endeavors.
Take, for example, the requirement that federal agencies file annual reports detailing how they handled Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The reports, for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, were due by Feb. 1. They're supposed to be available on a central Web page hosted by the Justice Department, which oversees all FOIA procedures for the federal government.
Yet here we are, on Feb. 27, nearly a month after the deadline, and only five cabinet ...
Gun permits stoke debates over privacy, open government
Posted: Feb. 26, 2013 | Tags: open government
Shortly after the tragic massacre of school children in Newtown, Conn., in December, the Westchester, N.Y., Journal News got access to a list of all gun permit owners in Westchester and Rockland counties and made it available on its website.
The publication of the list, which was a public record, provoked an outcry from permit holders who said their privacy had been violated.
Within a few weeks, the New York legislature and governor agreed to a bill making the records off limits to the public for four months. The bill also includes a provision giving permit holders the power ...
Sunshine Week: A commitment to open government
Posted: March 8, 2012 | Tags: Sunshine Week
Next week is Sunshine Week, designed to bring attention to the merits and benefits of having an open government. The main sponsors of the week are the American Society of News Editors and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
In some ways, it is bittersweet to have such a celebration. On the one hand, it is a great opportunity to expose people to the notion that a free flow of information from the government is vital to a functioning democracy. On the other hand, it seems too bad that we have to remind public officials and ordinary citizens ...
Suit seeks to force agencies to give FOIA time estimates
Posted: Feb. 21, 2012 | Tags: FOIA, Freedom of Information, New York Times, truth-out.org, Wikileaks
The folks at truth-out.org have filed suit against the FBI, the CIA, the Defense Department and several other federal agencies to force them to give the organization estimated dates for completing Freedom of Information Act requests.
The suit is based on the 2007 amendments to FOIA that required agencies to provide, among other things, “an estimated date on which the agency will complete action” on FOIA requests. Despite the clear statement in the law, some agencies don’t tell requesters when to expect results.
In a blog post explaining the suit, Jason Leopold reports that the FBI has refused ...
EPA, Commerce take lead in developing "FOIA Portal"
Posted: Feb. 16, 2012 | Tags: FOIA, Freedom of Information, Office of Government Information Services, OGIS, open government
A buzz is growing in the federal Freedom of Information community about a new $1.3 million “FOIA Portal” under development and slated for launch this fall. Thursday we got a chance to look under the hood a bit, as part of a group organized by the Office of Government of Information Services.
The system’s design and development is being led by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Commerce Department, and so far those are the only two agencies that have committed to implementing it. OGIS, housed in the National Archives, also is a partner in the portal project ...
Seven cabinet departments late filing FOIA reports
Posted: Feb. 13, 2012 | Tags: FOIA, Freedom of Information, Justice Department
Well, it’s time to see how federal agencies are doing in terms of filing their annual Freedom of Information Act reports. The reports, covering activity for the fiscal year that ended last Sept. 30, are supposed to be finished by Feb. 1.
Agencies apparently treat that deadline as seriously as they treat other FOIA deadlines, which is to say, not very. By yesterday afternoon, only eight of 15 Cabinet-level agencies had posted their reports online.
The reports show such things as how many requests the agency received, how many it processed, how the backlog changed, how many requests were ...
