FOIA requests – Page 5 – National Freedom of Information Coalition

Transparency officers named for Iowa universities

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From KCAU-TV.com: Iowa's three public universities are naming new transparency officers to oversee public records and public hearings.

The Iowa Board of Regents said Monday the transparency officers have been appointed in response to recommendations approved last week to improve responses to public records requests and access to information.

They are University of Iowa vice president Mark Braun, Iowa State University assistant to the president Shirley Knipfel, and University of Northern Iowa controller Gary Shontz.

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First 100 pages of Aaron Swartz’s Secret Service file released

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From Wired.com: After half-a-year of delays and roadblocks, the U.S Secret Service today released the first 104 pages of agency documents about the late coder and activist Aaron Swartz, including a brief report on Swartz’s suicide less than three months before his scheduled trial.

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Judge rejects bid to FOIA National Security Council

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From Politico: A federal judge in New York has rejected a bid to restore access to National Security Council records under the Freedom of Information Act. U.S. District Court Judge Eric Vitaliano, who sits in Brooklyn, said in a ruling dated Tuesday that he saw no reason to depart from a 1996 D.C. Circuit ruling that found files beyond the reach of FOIA on the grounds that the NSC's primary role is to advise the president.

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Change to electronic recordkeeping adds cost to FOIA requests

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From The Daily Progress: A shift to electronic filing for financial disclosure forms for 25,000 state workers and elected officials means it could cost the public dramatically more to get the records.

Searching 2008 to 2011 disclosure records for 525 Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control employees, for example, cost The Daily Progress nothing. The price tag for accessing the same documents for 2012 would have been $1,200, according to state officials.

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The 95 media-worthy FOIA requests flagged for Pentagon approval

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From Jason Leopold at The Public Record: A few weeks ago, the nonpartisan organization Cause of Action posted a story on its website about a secret Pentagon policy that calls for certain Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests that may generate media attention to first be approved by the Pentagon.

Naturally, I was eager to find out what FOIA requests analysts believed would be of interest to the Pentagon. So, I filed a FOIA for a copy of the list of those FOIAs.

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NSA says it can’t search its own emails

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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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Justice Department told not to delay Aaron Swartz FOIA

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From The Blog of Legal Times: A federal trial judge in Washington [July 23] urged the government to continue reviewing thousands of pages of documents that could be released in a public records lawsuit seeking information from the Secret Service about the Internet activist Aaron Swartz.

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Judge dismisses public records suit filed against Carolinas Healthcare System

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From CharlotteObserver.com: A judge has dismissed a lawsuit contending that one of the nation’s largest public hospital chains, Carolinas HealthCare System, violated the state public records law.

In an order signed Monday, Superior Court Judge Robert Sumner agreed that the Charlotte-based hospital system has a right to keep confidential a legal settlement that it obtained against the former Wachovia Bank.

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OGIS helps to resolve three-year old FOIA request

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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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Small California publisher wins public records case

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From San Jose Mercury News: A state Court of Appeal has ruled that a small-town California newspaper publisher does not have to pay legal fees to a school board he sued over his public records request —a decision hailed by First Amendment advocates as a victory for government transparency.

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