US Gov't Tops Itself In Waiting Years Before Responding To FOIA Requests With Nothing
from the can-unfulfilled-FOIA-requests-be-passed-on-to-next-of-kin? dept
The Freedom of Information Act is a key element of maintaining government transparency... in theory. In practice, however, those on the receiving end of these requests do everything in their power (and some things lying outside their power) to endlessly delay their responses, or simply hand over page after fully redacted page of "information." Most frequently, both tactics are deployed -- lengthy delays and wholesale redactions -- in order to give the requester something useless long after it's ceased to be relevant.
Here's two more following this same pattern. The first, a FOIA request about Google's 2007 complaint against Windows Vista search interference, has finally been released by the Department of Justice (via). The information, what there is of it, took the scenic route on its way to requester Thomas Claburn's hands.
In June 2007, I filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to learn more about the basis for Google's complaint that Microsoft's implementation of desktop search in Windows Vista violated the terms of its 2002 antitrust consent agreement.Six years total, including a year-and-a-half passing between the point the government cashed Claburn's check and when the documents actually arrived. Better late than never, as they say. Or would say, if any of the information obtained was of any use whatsoever.
In September 2011, I was notified that material relevant to my request would be provided, with a $15 fee to cover copying costs. I sent the check the following month and it was cashed in November 2011. It then took more than a year of hectoring the Department of Justice and the intercession of the Office of Government Information Services to actually get the "responsive materials." The documents arrived in late March.
After six years, the truth can finally be told. What follows is an excerpt from an email sent by Kulpreet Rana, Google's director of intellectual property, to Justice Department attorney Aaron Hoag, dated Oct. 4, 2006.As Claburn states, this isn't information, it's "routing data." In addition, the DOJ withheld 406 other pages of relevant documents completely. Whatever wasn't useless routing data for fully redacted email conversations was stuff anyone could have obtained without a FOIA request.
Thanking Hoag for taking the time to meet the previous week, Rana wrote, "During that meeting, you raised a few questions that we wanted to follow-up on. Rather than waiting to get all of the answers, I wanted to get back to you on some of the more pressing issues...probably the most important of which is REDACTED."
This goes on for an entire page. It's a gray box of nothing.
The dozens of email messages provided in response to my FOIA request look just like this: Page after page of gray where text should be. Only the email addresses, the signatures and the legal and social boilerplate have been left intact.
The pages that the Justice Department saw fit to release include news articles from the New York Times, Reuters and other publications about Google's complaint. The entirety of the "responsive material" either has been available to anyone with an Internet connection for years or consists of names, salutations, thank yous and nothing else.This sort of stonewalling and overenthusiastic redaction makes a mockery of the FOIA process. It would appear that many government entities would rather be sued into compliance, seeing as they have an unlimited amount of funds to fight the battle, whereas no plaintiff has that luxury.
Claburn's story is ugly but the next one is even uglier (via).
The conservative government accountability organization Judicial Watch recently received an official response letter to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request the group submitted in September 2002 — nearly 11 years ago.Judicial Watch didn't even receive heavily-redacted "information." It received an "official response letter." That's it.
“It’s quite common for federal agencies as well as the White House to flip the finger at FOIA requests that could expose wrongdoing or shed a negative light,” Judicial Watch wrote in a blog post Tuesday. “In fact, JW often must file lawsuits to get ‘public’ records that should not require litigation to obtain. In this particular case, it took the DIA and NSA a whopping 11 years to determine that the information falls under the ‘release authority’ of a different agency—the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS).”Judicial Watch will have to keep waiting. The letter from the NCIS claims it only received the request on March 21, 2013, meaning the DIA and NSA spent more than a decade deciding to kick the can down the road. The NCIS can't honestly be blamed for making the otherwise laughable statement that it will be unable to comply "within 20 days" and invoking the ten working day extension provision. Apparently, the DIA and NSA can't even be bothered to apologize for exceeding the deadline by over a decade.
Judicial Watch says it doesn't normally publish response letters, but considering the circumstances surround this particular request, it apparently felt it couldn't let the letter pass without comment.
If government agencies are going to treat the FOIA this way, could they at least get to the point in a more timely fashion? I mean, if you're just going to redact a majority of the information or play a decade-long game of keepaway, at least be upfront about it. A response letter received within 20 days that states nothing more than, "Screw you. Come back with a lawyer," would certainly be preferable to the current time frames. At least, people will know where they're headed next if they really want the requested information.
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Filed Under: delays, foia, freedom of information act, non-responsive, redactions
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'Fill one in and send it back'
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Re: 'Fill one in and send it back'
Let us see what happens when sheer interest is shown.
Other than that, it's just another day in United Police States of America. If the US were a true democracy this is one of the things that would NOT happen regularly.
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Re: Re: 'Fill one in and send it back'
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Re: 'Fill one in and send it back'
Remember the stonewalling that occurred after folks learned how the FBI was spying on them for being Environmental Protestors, Vietnam Protestors, ETC.
And years later when they did get anything it was just a bunch of horseshit...........mostly all blacked out stuff.
US Government are a bunch of Corrupt and Power Hungry Assholes !
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Re: Re: 'Fill one in and send it back'
This structure was easy to marry to the feudalist corporate structure as well as the military structure. This has resulted in the industrial-military complex we see today, with the corrupt, unethical use of favors for positions as players pass between goverment and industry jobs.
Now that feudalism has taken hold, it won't be shaken from within. We'll need a new country to show the world how it's done. Moon? Mars? Who knows.
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[...]
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Re: [...]
For those unaware of what this refers to...
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121119/11130221094/nsa-releases-heavily-redacted-talking -points-say-its-hard-to-watch-public-debate-its-efforts.shtml
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Re: [...]
At least make them spend those freking $15 in paper and ink.
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Re: Re: [...]
"Are we done yet?"
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They drag their feet and release next to nothing hoping that they can outlast the people making the request.
See also - We the People petitions
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Typo?
Also: Waiting for a response letter that says, in effect, "Screw you. Come back with a lawyer" is unnecessary, as that sentiment is clearly implied by the government's interpretation of apparent invisible fine print found hidden in the reporting requirements of the FOIA.
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Re:
What good would that do when they're not obeying the law as it's written now?
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gray box of nothing
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███████████?
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That's what I think and why. Anyone agree?
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FOIA
I filed to have the record expunged (denied) - I also requested - in three different letters - a meeting with the Customs, either locally, regionally or in Washington - do discuss. I asked them why they didn't "prosecute" if they had so much valid information, etc. Well, I am retired now and wouldn't get on an airplane to travel internationally for anything - particularly with the current group of clowns "in charge". Irony is, (A) was Top Secret Cat 3 Crypto in the military, (B) have passed many fingerprint and background checks (Concealed weapons permit plus the FBI's InfraGard organization) and not a peep! Oh, one funny things, I made separate FOIA's to both the FBI and DEA - both came back "clean". Question, if I had been such a bad-ass, don't you think that there would have been some information sharing between agencies - particularly between DEA - Customs? Not a chance. I even wrote letters to McCain, Graham and others - no response. This was/is more comic [tragic] than the Keystone Kops!
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Re: FOIA
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nasch Re: FOIA - Dates
Other:
09 March 2001 to FOI Unit at DEA - their response was "no information, etc. on record."
10 October 2001 to Bob Graham, Chairman Select Committee on Intelligence with CC to Porter J. Gross, Chair House Committee on Intelligence - no response from either (and I live in Florida).
09 October to Robert C. Bonner, Commissioner, Dept. of Treas., Us Customs - no response
Plus a few others which I don't have at hand.
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In defense of the DOJ response, the linked article goes on and on complaining about how all the informaiton is redacted, but fails to provide any specifics. I tend to get very skeptical when people complain about what they receive but aren't willing to show actual copies of the received documents, and this is a very good example of why.
On page 2 of the article, he provides a picture of part of a single page. The redacted portion is - as I expected - witheld under exemption (b)(4). "This section does not apply to matters that are trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential"
Under court precedent (as explained by DOJ - http://www.justice.gov/oip/foia_guide09/exemption4.pdf), improper releae of exemption 4 information can result in a lawsuit and all other sorts of unpleasantness. So, generally, the FOIA office will contact the company (or companies) in question for their input on what qualifies as (b)(4) exempt. In this case, tht would be Google, and possibly Microsoft. This review is a messy process, and can be very long and arduous, hence the delay in response.
And, in the end, what do we get? Google claims that they will be competitively harmed if it's revealed how they are competitively harmed. Not a huge surprise there.
More importantly, this isn't really the government's information to disclose. This is a corner case, admitted, but the FOIA isn't about releasing documents in possession of the government; it's about releasing documents related to the actions and activities of the government. And, accusations of regulatory capture aside, Google's actions and commercial data are not the government's to release.
11-Year Judicial Watch Response:
Not much detail without being able to see the request, but you cna make a fair guess. NSA and DIA regarding September 11? Something tells me there's classified information hidden in those documents. Also, it's most likely that everyone had their hands on it. Clearing 50-year old information that was once stamped "Confidential" can be a headache, to say nothing of records within the past 10-15 years that were likely stamped "Top Secret." And, unfortunately, the review process is highly dysfunctional. Everyone's afraid of any possible leak, so anyone who ever could have potentially touched the document needs to be consulted to determine releasability. So you take the beuracracy of a single office deqaling with a hot potato request, add on the extra handling rules for classified information, and multiply it by the number of agencies involved. As Judicial Watch's good friends the National Security Archive (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/) can attest, a governemnt entity responding to a FOIA request regarding sensitive material in under 25 years is downright meteoric.
So they're not picking on Judicial Watch. And frankly, I doubt that msot of the people processing the request are dragging their feet. But the FOIA office on the inside has quite the morass of beauracracy to wade through to get anything done on that sort of a request.
In short, there's not an evil shadow FOIA conspiracy full of cackling devils looking how to be cruel. It's mostly overworked and underpaid office drones, just like any other government office. If you're looking for systemic avoidance of the FOIA, the root cause is (for the msot part) no more and no less than a failure for leadership to consider FOIA a priority and/or reform the dysfunctionalities.
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