The Justice Department has picked a fight with an obscure ethics agency in Tennessee about how much evidence — called “discovery” — federal prosecutors should have to hand over to defense attorneys there. It’s the kind of little-noticed move the department makes all the time but could have a lasting impact on the criminal justice […]
Read More… from Why Tennessee Is Challenging the DOJ’s Ethics
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press secured an important victory last Thursday in Tokar v. Department of Justice currently pending before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Judge Rudolph Contreras held that the U.S. Department of Justice must provide Dylan Tokar, a reporter with the trade publication Just Anti-Corruption, the […]
The U.S. Department of Justice has refused to release its report on the Spokane Police Department’s reforms after a public records request and appeal by The Spokesman-Review. The report details how well Spokane police implemented 42 recommendations from the Justice Department’s collaborative reform process, a voluntary review the department undertook starting in 2012. The reform […]
the U.S. Justice Department has launched a new FOIA.gov site, redesigning the online portal through which citizens can request information under the Freedom of Information Act. Transparency groups have praised the redesign, which was mandated by Congress in 2016, describing it as a significant improvement over the previous FOIA.gov. The Sunlight Foundation, an open data […]
Read More… from U.S. Justice Department Launches New FOIA.gov Site
Document requesters used the Freedom of Information Act in record numbers in fiscal 2016, but agency offices still managed to reduce the long-standing backlog, according to the latest annual report from the Justice Department.
FOIA offices governmentwide received a record high of 788,769 requests, a 10.6 percent increase over the previous year, Justice’s Office of Information Policy reported on Wednesday. Requests have marched steadily upward since 2009, with a slight dip in fiscal 2015.
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Read More… from From GovExec: FOIA Requests Hit Record High, Processing Improves
The Justice Department has no current position on whether first requesters should get a priority look at the documents released before they are made available to the public under a planned “release to one, release to all” policy, according to Melanie Ann Pustay, Director of the Office of Information Policy at the Justice Department.
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Read More… from DOJ Agnostic on Timing for Publishing FOIA’d Documents
The watchdog group Cause of Action is suing the Justice Department for records on what is says are possible unethical disclosures of confidential taxpayer information to the White House, the organization announced Thursday.
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Twenty. Years. Yesterday, July 16, 2014, the Justice Department Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released its third report of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Lab misconduct first alleged twenty years ago – in 1994 – by Dr. Frederic Whitehurst.
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Good government groups are lambasting current regulations that govern the Freedom of Information Act and want the Justice Department to consider major changes.
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Read More… from Experts propose model to close loopholes in FOIA regulations
