The Texas Supreme Court has denied the appeal of a lower court decision permitting a delayed response to a public records request — potentially negating a law that requires a response to requests within 10 business days. In refusing to consider the case of Hartman Newspapers against Fort Bend County, the high court opens the […]
Read More… from Editorial: Supreme Court denial threatens Texas public records access
From MuckRock.com: It's been almost 50 years since the Freedom of Information Act's enactment and accessing information at the federal, state and local level has almost turned into a document lottery.
Over the past few days we have been breaking down what to expect when sending a response and today we take a better look at the difference between federal and state/local agencies.
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Read More… from Hunting local public records is faster than federal FOIA — but with a catch
From journalgazette.net: For years, the Central Intelligence Agency denied it had a secret file on MIT professor and famed dissident Noam Chomsky. But a new government disclosure obtained by FP reveals for the first time that the agency did in fact gather records on the anti-war iconoclast during his heyday in the 1970s.
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Read More… from CIA memo confirms snooping file on Noam Chomsky
From ProPublica: The NSA is a "supercomputing powerhouse" with machines so powerful their speed is measured in thousands of trillions of operations per second. The agency turns its giant machine brains to the task of sifting through unimaginably large troves of data its surveillance programs capture.
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From Matt Ehling, Public Record Media, via Twin Cities Daily Planet: In keeping with our mission, PRM aspires to be a comprehensive requester of public records. We not only submit a wide variety of data requests to government agencies, but we also pursue each through to its resolution, in order to ensure the integrity of Freedom of Information (FOI) processes at both the state and federal level.
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Read More… from OGIS helps to resolve three-year old FOIA request
From Thomas Clayburn, editor-at-large, Information Week:
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.
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From OpenTheGovernment.org:
Anyone walking out of the Department of Justice's (DOJ) Sunshine Week celebration on March 11 with no previous exposure to the FOIA system would have thought the process is working better for requesters than ever. Records are released 94% of the time; backlogs are down; agencies are using technology to help them process requests faster. These happy stories do not represent the reality for many requesters, however.
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Read More… from FOIA is looking great — through DOJ’s rose-colored glasses
From OMB Watch:
A recent court decision may make it more difficult and more time-consuming for people to receive materials from federal agencies when filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. It would allow agencies to delay FOIA requests more easily, which could hamstring those who rely on the law, including the open government community, journalists, and other advocacy groups. OMB Watch today joined an amicus brief urging the court to reverse the ruling.
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