Interior Department Putting Even More Effort Into Dodging FOIA Request

from the some-motivations-are-stronger-than-others dept

The Department of the Interior is still trying to remove the word "freedom" from "Freedom of Information Act." The first step is removing the word "information."

Earlier this year, the DOI tried to sneak past a rewrite of FOIA by hiding a request in the federal register. It would only apply to the DOI, hence the lack of legislative noise or heads up to the public. Under the guise of "ensuring compliance" with the law, the DOI wanted the power to unilaterally reject any request it found "burdensome."

Faced with an influx of requests, the DOI decided to double down on non-compliance. Rather than route more staff to the overburdened FOIA response team, the DOI decided it would be better served by tossing as many requests in the trashcan as possible.

A few months have passed, but the Interior Department's attitude towards transparency hasn't improved. In fact, it's gotten worse. The DOI's best and brightest continue to work tirelessly towards ensuring as little information is freed as is humanly possible. Roll Call, which first exposed this underhanded tactic in May, has more details on the DOI's flagrant disregard for FOIA's statutory requirements.

Documents sought under the Freedom of Information Act were withheld by the Interior Department under a practice that allowed political appointees to review the requests, internal emails and memos show.

The policy allowed high-ranking officials to screen documents sought by news organizations, advocacy groups and whistleblowers, including files set to be released under court deadlines. In some cases, the documents’ release was merely delayed. In other cases, documents were withheld after the reviews.

The department's spokesperson confirmed the new review procedure's existence while pointing out officials were under no obligation to release documents after review. Furthermore, the spokesperson asserted that any suggestion there's an "affirmative response requirement" following review is "driven by political motives." In other words, the suggestion the DOI might be dodging its FOIA obligations is just some sort of partisan slur.

Wonderful. Even FOIA has been politicized under this administration, which views government transparency with considerable side eye, considering many requests originate from members of the Fake News Media™.

But persistent requesters have managed to pry loose some documents from the close-fisted DOI. And those documents show staff and officials thwarting internal processes and removing hundreds of pages of responsive documents before turning them over to requesters.

After Joel Clement, a whistleblower, sued the department under FOIA to release records about being reassigned from his post, Interior Communications Director Laura Rigas interceded. Career FOIA officials in March 2018 identified 1,558 pages of “responsive” documents it planned to release — a number that was eventually pared down to just 49 after the review process.

“I have concerns about items in here [redacted],” Rigas said to Ryan McQuighan, a career records official.

Unfortunately, these internal communications are heavily-redacted so it's unclear what legal justifications -- if any -- DOI officials are using to keep documents away from requesters. What's on display here suggests DOI officials are more interested in protecting themselves than following the letter of the law. There are multiple exemptions the government may use to justify withholding information, but the requesters' (or requestees') political interests or motivations aren't among the exemptions.

But that seems to be what's happening. Requests by whistleblowers and environmental activists seem to be the ones most frequently targeted for official review -- at least according to the communications obtained by Earthjustice via a FOIA lawsuit.

Although this isn't how FOIA is supposed to work, this is how FOIA actually works. Government agencies are obligated to respond within a certain period of time and hand over responsive documents. In reality, the timetable is often extended indefinitely and documents are routinely withheld to prevent bad press over departmental embarrassment. The DOI is just doing what's become routine at federal agencies -- only it's doing it with a bit more attitude than most, not-so-subtly letting requesters know their chances of getting what they asked for are incredibly slim.

Filed Under: department of the interior, foia, transparency

Employee Watching Porn At Work Infected US Government Agency's Network

from the inside-[hand]job dept

Watching porn at work is a federal government tradition. Federal employees from agencies like the EPA, SEC, and FCC have been caught watching porn enough times, a Congressional rep actually thought a new law was needed to stop it. The bill was redundant. All federal agencies forbid the use of work computers to watch porn but that hasn't stopped these stories from surfacing with disturbing frequency.

At a certain point, porn-watching at work endangers a person's job. At other points before that, it endangers the employer itself. Zack Whittaker of TechCrunch dug up a Dept. of the Interior Inspector General's report [PDF] indicating a porn-watching employee inadvertently tried to the take the agency down from the inside.

A U.S. government network was infected with malware thanks to one employee’s “extensive history” of watching porn on his work computer, investigators have found.

The audit, carried out by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s inspector general, found that a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) network at the EROS Center, a satellite imaging facility in South Dakota, was infected after an unnamed employee visited thousands of porn pages that contained malware, which downloaded to his laptop and “exploited the USGS’ network.” Investigators found that many of the porn images were “subsequently saved to an unauthorized USB device and personal Android cell phone,” which was connected to the employee’s government-issued computer.

The official version -- with redactions -- provides a few more details. Loooooots of porn-watching going on here:

We found that [redacted] knowingly used U.S. Government computer systems to access unauthorized internet web pages. We also found that those unauthorized pages hosted malware. The malware was downloaded to [redacted's] Government laptop, which then exploited the USGS ' network. Our digital forensic examination revealed that- had an extensive history of visiting adult pornography websites. Many of the 9,000 web pages [redacted] visited routed through websites that originated in Russia and contained malware. Our analysis confirmed that many of the pornographic images were subsequently saved to an unauthorized USB device and personal Android cell phone connected to [redacted's] Government-issued computer. We found that [redacted's] personal cell phone was also infected with malware.

Like everywhere else this has happened, the DOI expressly forbids the use of work computers for porn viewing. It also makes employees sign a form stating that they understand what's forbidden and what can happen to them if they violate these policies. It's apparently not much of a deterrent. The report doesn't say what happened to [redacted] -- only that this employee admitted they were familiar with the policies they violated.

DOI also forbids connecting personal devices to work computers. That policy isn't being enforced either, apparently. If the DOI isn't actively monitoring work computers for these two violations, it really can't lay all the blame for the malware infection on its unofficial porn hub. Proactive measures are far more useful than post-infection policy patches.

Filed Under: department of the interior, government, malware, porn

Geotargeted Facebook Ads Used By Senator To Target The Dept. Of Interior

from the sniper-lobbying dept

By now, most people are aware that Facebook advertisements can be quite targeted in nature, whether by age, gender, or location. Most people also are aware of the level of spending by politicians and government for Facebook ads to get their messages out to their targeted audience. But just how targeted can Facebook ads be in the service of politicians? Well, for that we turn to the story of Lisa Murkowski, Senator from Alaska, and her attempt to get a road built between two towns in her state.

Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski has been trying for years to convince the Interior Department to allow Alaska to build a 11-mile road through a wildlife refuge to make two remote towns in the state more easily accessible. But the Interior Department has balked, citing environmental concerns; the area is a habitat for migratory birds. In order to convince Department officials to change their minds, Murkowski recently targeted them—and only them—with a video ad on Facebook.

How did she do this? Well, she produced a video advertisement and bought ads on Facebook that were set to run specifically during lunchtime hours and geo-targeted 1849 C Street, N.W. in Washington D.C.. That address is the building for the Interior Department. That's fairly precise targeting, I think, which is why it's actually quite impressive that the advertisement appeared in the newsfeeds seven-thousand times as it ran and the video had been clicked on well over two-thousand times. But exactly how precise was the geo-location portion of this advertisement?

Well, it depends on how big the building is. A spokesperson from Facebook directed me to a help page explaining how to target people in a specific location (which it can determine from GPS coordinates off their smartphone or, less reliably, from the IP address of their computer). The most granular option is targeting a location with a radius of one kilometer, or a little over half a mile.

So if you were targeting a workplace with a one-mile long campus, like Facebook itself, you could be guaranteed to show an ad only to people in its buildings. But the Department of Interior takes up just one city block. So when Murkowski targeted the Interior Department’s address, she was actually targeting not just that building, but all the people and buildings in a half-mile radius.

Which probably led to some very confused people in nearby buildings wondering what the hell this video about a road in Alaska was doing in their newsfeed. This does come off as perhaps a tad unseemly, but I view this kind of targeted advertising less negatively than I do traditional lobbying efforts. And it's not exactly clear whether all of those views had any real effect on the policy-makers, as the Interior Department still opposes the building of the road as of the date of this writing.

Still, it's a brave new world out there for anyone looking to influence policy-makers.

Filed Under: department of the interior, geographic targeting, lisa murkowski, social media, targeted ads
Companies: facebook

Google Sues The US Government For Only Considering Microsoft Solutions

from the hubris dept

Eric Goldman alerts us to the interesting bit of news that Google has sued the US government -- specifically the Department of the Interior, for not seriously considering Google Apps when it put out a Request for Quotation (RFQ) to handle its messaging needs. Specifically, the DOI stated upfront in the RFQ that the solution had to be part of the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite. Google is making the argument that this is "unduly restrictive of competition," and it seems like they've got a decent argument there.

Most of the lawsuit details the history of meetings and conversations between Google and the DOI, where Google sought to convince the DOI that its solution was acceptable. The DOI justified limiting its offerings to Microsoft, by saying that Microsoft had two things that other solution providers did not: unified/consolidated email and "enhanced security." Google disputes this (not surprisingly) and notes various problems with Microsoft solutions -- including well reported downtime issues. Google protested the RFQ when it was released, but the GAO dismissed Google's protest saying that since Google does not have a GSA schedule contract (i.e., what you need to sell to the gov't), it was "not an interested party." Anyway, should make for an interesting lawsuit if it goes anywhere...

Filed Under: competition, department of the interior, messaging, single-source
Companies: google