SCOTUS Won’t Hear Mugshots Case, Keeping Federal Mugshots Secret The Supreme Court left a July 2016 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which says that federal mugshots don’t need to be released under the FOIA, in place this week. Last July the appeals court ruled en banc against the Detroit Free Press and against the status quo, determining […]
Anonymous Phone Call Threatens Violence if Bankruptcy Lawyer Keeps Bothering Trump; FBI “Inadvertently” Claims Call Investigation Still Ongoing in Response to Records Request FOIA releases from the FBI raise new questions about President Trump’s business tactics, particularly when things were not going his way. The FOIA responses – to Buzzfeed’s Jason Leopold and MIT’s Ryan […]
Newly declassified documents demonstrate the continuing haphazard application of United States secrecy regulations. The progress of declassification remains a one step forward-two steps back dance, with authorities responsible for the release of records misapplying applicable regulations, laws, and secrecy guidelines. Today’s illustration of this resides in a recently-declassified history of United States policy toward unrest […]
The CIA’s Homosexual Investigations In 1980, the same year the Democratic Party endorsed a gay-rights platform, the CIA issued a three-page memo on how to “ferret out” homosexuals during investigations, possibly for blackmail. MuckRock recently published the memo as part of a post of the CIA’s cringe-worthy (and insulting) practices and assumptions about the LGBT […]
Washington, D.C., April 14, 2017 – The Trump White House announced today it would no longer disclose the routine visitor logs maintained by the Secret Service and published online by the Obama administration since 2009, and claimed national security and privacy risks.
Deported DREAMer Files FOIA Suit for Info; Kelly Tells DHS Critics to “Shut Up” And Assume Agency Following Law Juan Manuel Montes, 23, was brought to the United States from Mexico by his parents 14 years ago and is protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program; he is also believed to be […]
Below are the National Security Archive’s comments on the Office of Government Information Services’ (OGIS) reviews and reports, submitted in anticipation of OGIS’s public meeting, tomorrow, 4/20, at 9 in the U.S. National Archive’s McGowan Theater. Thank you for holding your annual meeting with the public and soliciting comments on OGIS’s reviews and reports, in […]
FOIA requesters who relied on lists of classified directives published by both the Defense Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to know what documents to file FOIA requests for may now be out of luck. In a transparency backslide, both the DOD and JCS websites no longer publish lists of classified directives and instructions, making […]
The Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP) has justifiably acquired a good reputation for its fairness in making final decisions on mandatory declassification review (MDR) appeals for national security information. During the course of its existence since 1996, through FY 2015 it reviewed over 2400 documents and released more information from over 1800 of them, with […]
Trump Visitor Logs Lawsuit The National Security Archive, together with the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), filed a FOIA lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security for the release of the White House visitor logs this week in the federal District Court for […]