Via @ProPublica: TSA takes 4 years to respond to #FOIA request

OGIS blog post on reasons #FOIA requesters sue: agencies refusing to talk w/ requesters, not explaining denials.

@vielmetti you may be interested in this report by @Steph_Steinberg: #foia

RT @carltonpurvis: applied every exemption they could possibly find for this #FOIA rejection to @davidtpegg - @FOIAchat

RT @FOIAchat: Why #FOIA makes a terrible search engine, and other pieces by @vielmetti on FOIA, including w #journos ...

RT @Privasoft: Remembering John Moss, Founder of the #FOIA, as the 45th Anniversary of the FOIA Approaches: #Transpar ...

RT @HarvestHealth: Reporters, are you ready for FOI Friday? RT @spj_tweets: FOI Tip of the Week: #FOIA fee cheat sheet ...

Madison ordinance used to fine man for setting up non-intrusive table on sidewalk to hawk papers held unconstitutional:

Column: A small # of ppl use #FOIA often & possibly unnecessarily. Some of them are pests. But you know what? Too bad.

To keep content like this from becoming public, Kawski argued, the office would have to conduct a careful review, using what is known as a “balancing test” to determine if the statutory presumption of openness is outweighed by other considerations. Moreover, “We would argue that the balancing test should be applied to each and every email.” The number of emails at issue for the longer time period encompassed by the AP’s request, he said, has been estimated at 125,000. He allowed that this would take “a great deal of time.”

HB477 would prohibit the disclosure of text messages and instant messages, allow government agencies to charge fees that can include administrative and overhead costs and require requesters wanting records protected by the government to show with a preponderance of evidence the records should be released.

From March 13-19, Americans will commemorate the importance of open government during Sunshine Week. Organized by the American Society of Newspaper Editors and a coalition of groups including OMB Watch, Sunshine Week is observed annually to coincide with the birthday of James Madison, the Founding Father known for his emphasis on checks and balances in government.

In Milner, the word under the microscope was “personnel.” The Navy invoked Exemption 2 shielding personnel documents, in response to a request from Glen Milner, a Puget Sound resident. He had asked for documents concerning explosives stored at a nearby Navy base and how to deal with a possible mishap.

(2) The department shall maintain a confidential list of the persons to whom the department has issued registry identification cards. Individual names and other identifying information on the list is confidential and is exempt from disclosure under the freedom of information act, 1976 PA 442, MCL 15.231 to 15.246.

Milner v. Department of the Navy (09-1163)

Town officials in Cornelius and Davidson say they haven’t complied with The Charlotte Observer‘s January public records requests for email addresses of citizens who subscribe to the towns’ communications lists.

First, let’s explain the name, “Exemption10.” The Freedom of Information Act, first passed in 1966, contains nine exemptions that give agencies the power to withhold information. But 45 years of experience show that it often seems there is an unwritten 10th exemption, which can be broadly characterized as, “We don’t want to give it to you.”

Where Not To Walk In Cambridge

A Feb. 7 Metro article about the cost to Northern Virginia school districts of responding to Freedom of Information Act requests by parents mischaracterized the role of Fairfax County resident Elizabeth Schultz. The story described Schultz as having filed more than a dozen FOIA requests in her bid to keep her neighborhood school, Clifton Elementary, from closing. It also described Schultz as being among those who filed a lawsuit, based on information found through FOIA requests, seeking to keep Clifton open. But while Schultz is a founder of a group trying to save Clifton and has distributed results of the FOIA requests and information regarding the lawsuit, both the FOIA requests and the lawsuit were actually filed by other residents affiliated with the group. In addition, the article described Schultz as having a daughter at Clifton. In fact, Schultz has a son at the school.

CLEVELAND — The Ohio Supreme Court has ruled that volunteer committees that created recommendations for Cuyahoga County's charter government are not subject to the state's open-records laws.

Ted Czech, a reporter for the York Daily Record, requested the time response reports in 2009. The reports list: the time a 911 call is received; the time the dispatcher contacts the police or fire department; and the time authorities arrive. The reports also list the destination addresses for the call. The logs are intended to measure response times to 911 calls. York County denied Czech's request for the addresses in the response logs.

We are concerned that DHS, in its desire to create security partnerships with the private industries that own or control 85 percent of this nation’s critical infrastructure, may inadvertently cause public oversight to be ceded, resulting in unintended and unresolved dangers in areas that have nothing to do with terrorism.

The Hamburg Township Board of Trustees faced two separate issues involving Freedom of Information Act requests at its regular meeting Tuesday night.

A request for 35,000 names and addresses on a newsletter mailing list and increasing costs are behind a measure that the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County is considering that would seek to change state laws governing Freedom of Information Requests.

Randal Picker, a law professor at the University of Chicago, said that the law regarding the federal government shows that "the basic premise is that the government doesn't get copyrights of their own works."
But Esther Seitz, an attorney with Illinois Press Association, said the law is vague on whether state and local governments also enjoy copyright protection.
As of Friday, Strom's reposted video clips remained on YouTube with a disclaimer that states: "Please note that while Evanston/Skokie School District 65 has claimed a copyright issue regarding school board meeting recordings posted to YouTube, District 65's own policy manual states that 'Any person may record or broadcast an open board meeting.'"

Ostergren began advocating for reform in 2003 when she created her web site, and two years later she began her practice of publishing unredacted documents on that site. The controversy sparked by her web site led to the amendment of Section 59.1-443.2, which prohibited the intentional communication of a person’s social security number, to remove the exception for “records required by law to be open to the public.” After the Virginia Attorney General announced his intention to prosecute Ostergren under the amended statute, Ostergren brought suit under Section 1983, seeking to have the law declared unconstitutional under the First Amendment as applied to her publication of copies of public records lawfully obtained from the government.

IOWA – After debate over what types of e-mail records can be disclosed under Iowa’s open-records law, the Iowa Association of School Boards is preparing to disclose documents requested by the Des Moines Register.

Since September, the Register has sought the disclosure of e-mails between IASB staff members, U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin and Michael Perik, a Harkin campaign contributor, whose companies have collected more than $6 million from IASB through federally funded contracts, according to a Register report.

For the first time, a federal court has ruled that metadata — information related to the history, tracking or management of an electronic document — must be released if requested under the Freedom of Information Act. A federal judge in New York City made the ruling Monday in National Day Laborer Organizing Network v. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency.

 The Belleville News Democrat obtained thousands of emails from Illinois Workers' Compensation Commission arbitrator Jennifer Teague through the Freedom of Information Act after getting a tip about a switched hearing date in the case.
     Here are some of the emails released by the News Democrat:
     "We are going to do it on the sly with no press," Teague wrote in an email to a court reporter on Nov. 30.
     "There is nothing I can do to keep them [News-Democrat reporters] out of a public hearing, but will be more than willing to do a special setting and an unknown place and time!" Teague wrote to the former trooper's lawyer, Kerry O'Sullivan, on Oct. 18.

$26,000 bill for FOIA request in Virginia; the usual reason for high foia prices is absurdly overbroad requests

The National Security Archive has committed an entire section of its website, thirteen blog entries, and one 122-page manual, among other resources, to explain how users can effectively engage FOIA. My purpose in writing this blog is to provide you with a single reference for all FOIA inquiries. Ambitious, but possible through the invention of hyperlinks.

Elizabeth Schultz and other parents sued the school district under FOIA for school board members’ private e-mail correspondence relating to closure of the small elementary school. They said the correspondence about the school’s closure violated the open meeting section of the law.

Councils' response: DoD, GSA and NASA understand that the FOIA regulations and procedures and the Executive Order 12600, Predisclosure Notification Procedures for Confidential Commercial Information, must be closely examined by the FOIA experts and adequately addressed as consideration is being given to what contract documents to make available to the public.

A search of the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) produced a total of thirteen (13) compact discs including audio recordings and document files with approximately three-thousand (3000) pages of records, eight (8) analog tapes, and an estimated three-thousand two-hundred fifty (3250) pages of physical records that were located. After a complete review of the records I have determined that, absent a privacy waiver regarding the subjects named in the investigation, all records will be withheld pursuant to FOIA Exemptions 6 and 7(C) of the FOIA.

Feb. 08--A Monongalia County resident recently got detailed information -- from the value of a home to the number of plumbing fixtures in it -- about all the residential properties in the county through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

The data in the FOIA logs I obtained reveal the priorities of the Civil Rights Division — transparency for friends, stonewalls for the unfriendly. Those enjoying speedy compliance with their Freedom of Information Act requests include:

Only one federal appellate court -- the U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati (6th Cir.) in Detroit Free Press, Inc. v. Department of Justice -- found that the release of mug shots of indicted individuals does not constitute an invasion of person privacy under FOIA Exemption 7(c). The U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled on the issue. Disclosure of mug shots under FOIA is also at issue in a pending case before the U.S. Court of Appeals in Miami (11th Cir.), Karantsalis v. Department of Justice, where the lower court upheld the Marshals' decision to withhold mug shots that had been requested by a journalist.

Theodore "Ted" Stevens died in a plane crash on August 9, 2010 at the age of 86. Stevens served as a U.S. senator from Alaska from December 24, 1968 until January 3, 2009. Stevens had been the target of an FBI public corruption investigation.

We'll continue looking at the files today -- feel free to chime in in the comments if you see something interesting you'd like to bring to our attention. (In fact, the FBI files even include comments from readers of the Anchorage Daily News website; whoever printed them out also printed out the comments, and included them with the original articles.)

WebQA announced today that its GovQA division has acquired an interest in Geneva, IL based FOIA Systems, the country's leading provider of open records tracking systems for local governments and public schools.The nation's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and open records laws countrywide set forth timeframes and requirements that public schools, hospitals, governments, associations and other public organizations must meet in providing publically available information in response to citizen requests.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/02/10/prweb5053654.DTL#ixzz1DaKprzCI

The 14 bedbug complaints documented in Horry County last year occurred between May 25 and Oct. 26, records show.
The Chronicle obtained the reports through a S.C. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking all Horry County bedbug complaints filed with DHEC.

"We've got lawyers and political strategists in this community - people who know how to use data and know how to FOIA," said Catherine Lorenze, a Fairfax parent whose advocacy Web site, redapplemom.com, includes an explanation of how parents can use FOIA requests.

We also learned that neither we nor college officials know all that much about the appropriate use of FERPA, the law that sets most -- but not nearly all -- facts about students off-limits from reporters. Most colleges appear to err on the side of nondisclosure.

House Bill 4052, introduced last month, would apply to all public employees and public employee collective-bargaining units that have access to public e-mail servers.

To determine which area cities and counties leased vehicles to third parties, The Courier sent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests asking for information regarding any such leases.

The report reveals that an "anti-censorship team" at the board's technology services and innovation office performed tests on the so-called FOE, or "feed over e-mail," system in Washington; Shenzhen, China; Beijing and Hong Kong. GovernmentAttic.org, which regularly publishes federal documents obtained through FOIA, requested the test findings in November.

The second proposal -- the one requiring all public documents to be labeled as either subject or not subject to FOIA -- incited a flood of criticism from government associations, advocacy groups and even the Virginia Press Association. The way the bill is written now, even documents as common as emails would need to be marked since they're considered public documents under FOIA law. Training workers to label everything would be unbelievably expensive and time-consuming, opponents said.

pute’ that prompted him to make a personal call directly to the Dallas Police Chief.  Which story is true?  For now the public is left in the dark unable to find out because Dallas officials are pleading with the Attorney General of Texas claiming releasing public documents about the case “‘may be highly intimate or embarrassing’ and are of no interest to the public’”.  Really Dallas?  We disagree!

In a split decision issued on Jan. 30, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia handed the nonprofit group a defeat in Consumers’ Checkbook v. Dept. of Health and Human Services.

The judges said freedom-of-information laws were mainly intended to shed light on government operations, not the workings of private businesses.

ORLANDO, Fla. — The publisher of The Wall Street Journal went to court yesterday seeking to overturn a 31-year ban on the release of records about how much Medicare money individual doctors receive.

Dow Jones & Company Inc. filed suit in federal court in Orlando in an effort to end a prohibition that was implemented in 1979 following a successful lawsuit in Florida by the American Medical Association.

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) - West Virginia football coach Bill Stewart's revised employment agreement addressed the Mountaineers' current NCAA infractions case.

Stewart signed the agreement in November, setting the stage for Athletic Director Oliver Luck to hire Dana Holgorsen, who was introduced last month.

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Holgorsen will be the Mountaineers' offensive coordinator for the 2011 season and replace Stewart as head coach after the season ends.

Although whining is second-nature to most journalists, "TUOL" humbly suggests that the journalists would be better served by educating the private sector bigwig Scott about his obligations to the public through the use of the Florida Public Records Law (Fla. Stat. ch. 19) and the importance of open meetings via the Florida Sunshine Law (Fla. Stat. Sec. 286.011) and the Sunshine State's constitution (Art. 1, Sec. 24(b)) for openers.

The Attorneys General of Oregon and Washington are asking state lawmakers to make public documents more accessible.

A pair of bills in Salem and a hearing Thursday in Olympia come in response to critics who say obtaining government records is too expensive and takes too long.

Oregon Attorney General John Kroger wants to create strict deadlines for public agencies to respond to records requests.

Yet another financial problem rests with Freedom of Information Request abuse. DuPage Forest Preserve District Commissioner Carl Schultz said one person had recently cost the district $60,000 for FOIA requests; much of the information is already available, Schultz said.

When residents sign up for or read Town of Davidson emails, they see a message promising confidentiality. But that message did not consider the possibility that a business or news organization might seek to capture email addresses using the public records law. Since receiving the request, the town’s privacy statement has been revised to add the phrase “except where required by law.”

The Press & Guide received a final decision this week on a request for documents detailing how Crestwood School Board Treasurer Ed Garcia lost his day job with the Dearborn Heights Police Department for the better part of 2010.

Unfortunately, our request was denied.

 The court ruled this week that when Fairchild in 1955 allowed the CAA to release the documents to people who would have no obligation to keep them secret, the documents stopped being secret. Therefore, the information in the documents no longer qualifies as “trade secrets” that can be withheld under FOIA, and the government is obligated to release the documents. The court also ruled that the aircraft’s specifications are not trade secrets because they are no longer commercially valuable, as the technology is outdated and Fairchild no longer manufactures aircraft.

Many state workers were appalled that this newspaper publicized publicly available information about the salaries of commonwealth employees last October. State Sen. Steve Martin has now introduced a bill to prevent future such incidents by amending the Freedom of Information Act.

MOUNT PLEASANT -- The question of whether Town Council conducts public business by e-mail in violation of the state Freedom of Information Act is a key issue in a lawsuit brought by former Planning Commission Chairman Steve Brock.

The City of Charlotte has given residents on its e-mail list a heads-up about the Charlotte Observer obtaining the city list through an open records request. The paper’s Director of Strategic Products and Audience Development says the Observer requested the listings “because we believe that many of the engaged citizens on the lists would be interested in helping us improve our journalism by telling us about stories they see.”

This is problem far larger than the Works Project. The DEGC/DEGA, which provides staff support to city development authorities like the DDA, EDC, and Brownfield Authority, does important work. However, it’s really disingenuous to say an organization created at the behest of a government entity to service said government entity is exempt from sunshine laws because it’s not a formal part of the government.

Scalia demanded more examples, but, without waiting for the lawyer to respond, ticked off several of his own, pointing the other way: “personal characteristics,” he said, is a phrase that does not apply to General Motors, neither does “personal qualities,” nor “personal privileges.”   To suggest that “personal privacy” would apply to a corporation, the Justice said, would be “a very strange concept.”

The National Association of Manufacturers filed an amicus brief (here) in support of AT&T in the case. As our Manufacturing Law Center summary states: An exemption in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) applies to records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes, “but only to the extent that the production of such law enforcement records or information . . . could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” AT&T turned over records to the FCC in connection with an investigation of some bills, and a trade association representing some of its competitors sought all the records. In this suit to prevent the FCC from releasing the records, the Third Circuit held that a corporation is included in the statute’s definition of a “person” and thus has personal privacy interests protected from disclosure by Exemption 7(c) of FOIA. …

The Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) generally allows access to, and disclosure of, federal information and records to those who requested them, subject to some exceptions, including one for a disclosure that would constitute an invasion of “personal privacy.” Following a recent investigation of Respondent AT&T Inc. (“AT&T”) by Petitioner the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”), Respondent CompTel, a non-profit trade association, requested under FOIA all of the records and information pertaining to the FCC’s investigation. In allowing disclosure of some of the information, the FCC rejected AT&T’s argument that such disclosure would constitute an invasion of “personal privacy,” holding that this exception was strictly limited to individuals. AT&T appealed to the Third Circuit, which held that a corporation may have “personal privacy” interests and remanded to the FCC. AT&T argues that the term “personal privacy” applies to corporations as well as individuals, and the FCC argues that such a term is limited to individuals. The Supreme Court’s decision in this case will determine the amount of protection given to corporations under FOIA and will likely affect the amount of access the public has to certain private corporate information.

So, now that — thanks to Mr. Cuccinelli’s CID — the University’s claim that the records do not exist is no longer operative, and having said they identified the particular server , we have moved under Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act, directing to them to conduct a very inexpensive, targeted search for those (already found) documents on that (already identified) server.

First in a series of occasional articles on rulings issued by the Secretary of State’s office concerning appeals of public records requests filed with public agencies.

Washington — A House committee has asked the Homeland Security Department to provide documents about a policy that required political appointees to review Freedom of Information Act requests. The letter to Homeland Security was sent by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. It represents a move by House Republicans who have vowed to launch numerous probes of the Obama administration.

Karn, 24, submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the city seeking "any files or communications" the police department has about her and The Wingnut — the home on Barton Avenue where she lives with four other self-proclaimed anarchists. She also is seeking files on the Richmond organization of Food Not Bombs, to which she and her housemates belong, and the local Copwatch group they started that videotapes interactions between police and citizens.

 This case involves the applicability of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) privacy and law-enforcement-purposes exemptions to a police incident report.   Following a notorious assault of several Michigan State University students in a dormitory room, plaintiff State News made a FOIA request that defendant Michigan State University disclose the report.   Michigan State resisted this request, claiming that the FOIA privacy and law-enforcement-purposes exemptions permitted it to withhold the requested report.   Litigation between the parties ensued, and the Court of Appeals eventually held that the circuit court had erred in determining that the entire report could be withheld.   In its decision remanding the case to the circuit court, the Court of Appeals observed that the “subsequent availability of information as a result of later court proceedings in the criminal justice system may well strengthen or weaken the arguments of the parties to a FOIA dispute regarding the applicability” of the exemptions at issue and instructed the circuit court to consider the effect of that availability.1

Some information was released, but much was withheld and/or blacked out before some limited, spotty information was finally given to The Clare Sentinel after the newspaper filed a Michigan Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the City of Clare.
The newspaper subsequently filed an appeal, seeking to obtain more answers regarding this situation, but that appeal was denied by a vote of the Clare City Commission Dec. 15.

What reasons does government use to deny a "request for disclosure of Information"? I recently had occasion to make a FOIA request from the Port Huron, Michigan, Police Department. The form letter which denied the request carries the following language.

The U.S. State Department is hiding emails between Sec. of State Hillary Clinton’s office and her former high-ranking campaign official who is now the chief lobbyist for the Keystone XL pipeline project, rejecting a Freedom of Information Act request from the Friends of the Earth seeking to see those emails.

Vermont’s public records law gives judges the power to award attorney’s fees to anyone who successfully challenges a public records denial in court. Most states do the same. But Vermont judges rarely exercise that power, leaving the victorious, but poorer, citizen to fend for him or her self.

As reported by Courthouse News Service, the Times, which is owned by the nonprofit Poynter Institute for Media Studies, filed a freedom of information request Dec. 1, pursuant to Florida's Public Records Act (Ch. 119, Fla. Stat.) and Art. 1, Sec. 24 of the Fla. Constitution (access to public records & meetings), seeking warning notices and citations issued by the city. Then-Fla. Gov. Charlie Crist signed into law in May 2010, H.B. 325, which empowers cities to use red-light cameras and other traffic infraction devices to issue citations to offending drivers.