This post originally appeared on The Wilson Center’s blog, Sources and Methods. The archives of Ukraine are open and they are filled with former Soviet secrets. Anyone conducting research on the Soviet Union, nuclear history, or the Cold War should visit Ukraine as soon as possible. After being selected as the Nuclear Proliferation International History […]
Anemic FBI Crime Report Published in Consultation with Public Affairs, not Advisory Board FiveThirtyEight has an excellent article on the FBI’s 2016 Crime in the United States report – “a collection of crime statistics gathered from over 18,000 law-enforcement agencies” that contains 70 percent fewer data tables than previous iterations. The missing data from the […]
DOJ OIP Head Implies New FOIA Portal will be “Better than the Letter of the Law” The FOIA Improvement Act of 2016 mandates the creation of a “consolidated online request portal that allows a member of the public to submit a request for records under subsection (a) to any agency from a single website. The […]
FOIA Federal Advisory Committee Highlights Email Preservation, FOIA Searches The Federal FOIA Advisory Committee met today (video available here and other resources here), with updates from the three subcommittees (searches, efficiencies and resources, and proactive disclosure), and a very interesting presentation on NARA’s email Capstone policy from Jason Baron, formerly NARA’s director of litigation and now […]
US dropped prosecution of Chicago Tribune for espionage during World War II for leaking that US Navy knew about Japanese plans to attack Midway Island
ICE FOIA Library Still Down U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement took down its FOIA library on October 3 “for review” – and has yet to reactivate the site. MuckRock’s Emma Best drew attention to the issue, which is important not only because the library houses, among other things, the agency’s FOIA reports that ICE is required […]
FOIA Details Pruitt’s Deep Industry Ties, Costly Security Detail A FOIA request from American Oversight has won the “most detailed look” to date at Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Scott Pruitt’s schedule. The 320-pages reveal the daily schedule for Pruitt’s first three months in office (February through May); included on the schedule is an […]
Over the years, we've seen countless cases of a government agency or official refusing to declassify a document on national security grounds, only to find out it's already been safely released to the public by another deparment.
The sheer quantity of these "dubious secrets" points up problems of subjectivity, poor communication, and overclassification within the secrecy system.
FOIA Shows Immigration Judges Reassigned to Border Lack Work While Backlog Grows at Home A FOIA request to the Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR) shows that a Trump administration initiative to speed up deportations by sending more than 100 of the country’s roughly 300 immigration judges on short-term missions to the U.S.-Mexico […]
Congress Surreptitiously Undermines FOIA Congress is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and members of congress are under no obligation to make their records public. But congressional communications with the Executive Branch agencies they are tasked with overseeing are subject to FOIA. Justice Department Office of Information Policy guidance makes clear that […]