DHS's ICE Group Accused Of Lying To Court About Expense Of Complying With FOI Request
from the but-of-course dept
Having just filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request concerning documents from Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division, you can bet that it caught my attention that ICE is now being accused of lying to a court in claiming massive expenses to comply with a FOIA request for metadata on documents. After some back and forth, a court had ordered ICE to provide the specific data under the FOIA. ICE told the court that it was using a product from a company called Clearwell, but that it ran into technical and monetary hurdles, including having to spend $270,000 in upgrades, and also that it had to suspend security protocols to run the applications.Apparently, Clearwell's competitors have been having a field day with this, using the filing by the government to bash Clearwell's product, so the company put out a blog post that claims ICE was basically lying to the court:
Neither OPLA nor any other part of ICE paid a dime for upgrades or a new server. In reality, its use of the product for this matter is covered under ICE�s existing license, and we provided an extra server and services for free to help them meet a tight deadline. . . .Apparently, it's not a good idea to use such things as an excuse when the company you're claiming was the problem has the ability to speak up itself. Of course, my request isn't for any metadata, so hopefully they can avoid having to spend $270,000 to find the few documents I requested.
In 16 working days, Clearwell was used to process a large volume of information and produce nearly 15,000 pages of Opt-Out Records . . . To help ICE meet its deadline, two Clearwell consultants worked onsite during this period � at absolutely no cost to ICE.
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Filed Under: foia, freedom of information, homeland security, ice
Reader Comments
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psst
(I do not think that links to what you think it links to.)
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Re: psst
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LUCY!!!
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Sounds like some seriously dope hip-hop, broceephus. Word.
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Having to suspend security protocols?
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it cost SOMEONE lots of additional money, in this case the software company.
DHS had to spend some additional money on overtime, additional people, etc.
But it is good to see a group call them out on the untruths.
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Re: The truth DOES NOT always lie somewhere in between
Sometimes one extreme end is where the truth lies.
Quote I've seen by a regular poster on Groklaw:
Is the Moon made of Cheese? Or is it not?
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Re: Re: The truth DOES NOT always lie somewhere in between
I say you should eat rat poison.
Now, there's no need for us to be extremists, let's compromise!
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Re: Re: Re: The truth DOES NOT always lie somewhere in between
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Re: Re: Re: Re: The truth DOES NOT always lie somewhere in between
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Blurry line
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Re: Blurry line
And then sexually assaults you for good measure?
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ICE didn't lie...
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You mean...
I think you mean, "hopefully they can avoid having to lie about spending $270,000 to find the few documents..."
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granted, i only read through the top layer of links, so im not really sure what the request was actually for, but in my experience, evoking a tl;dr is effectively the same as not putting out any info at all, and they could still say they actually exceeded the terms of the request.
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and why should that be anyone else's problem? When the governments job is to provide us with documents, whatever costs they encounter are their problems, not the requester.
Say I buy Internet access for $30 a month on a yearly contract. Now all of a sudden my ISP's computers crash as a result of some third party software that they use. It costs them $100,000 to fix. What, are they going to tell me that I must now pay $50 for the duration of the contract and change the terms last minute? No.
Granted, this is not the best analogy (and there are some appreciable differences here), but the point is that their internal costs are not my problem. Their job is to provide this information upon request.
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Re:
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lying..
The days are long past when there was any honesty in branches of the government.
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FOIA Compliance is MANDATORY
ICE has basically stated that they never made preparations to comply, and that it would cost them over a quarter million dollars to enact their mandatory compliance that for some reason they hadn't done before, despite it being mandatory for them.
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Untruths
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Re: Untruths
Their stupidity is orders of magnitude higher than almost any other brach of US government.
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