Secrecy and FOIA

NARA Publishes First Unauthorized Destruction Chart This week the U.S. National Archives published its first “unauthorized disposition of federal records” chart. The chart – which includes both open and closed cases and will be updated monthly –  catalogs all of the cases NARA investigated in Fiscal Year 2017 concerning the “actual, impending, or threatened unlawful […]

Presidential Records Act Case Draws Attention to White House’s Disappearing Messaging Apps The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia’s Judge Christopher Cooper ruled against Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and the National Security Archive in our Presidential Records Act lawsuit targeting the Trump administration’s use of disappearing messaging apps. The […]

OIP’s Position Doesn’t Pass the “Common-Sense Test” This week the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on “The Freedom of Information Act: Examining the Administration’s Progress on Reforms and Looking Ahead.” The hearing consisted of one panel, all government witnesses – the Justice Department Office of Information Policy’s Melanie Pustay, the Office of Government Information […]

New FOIA.gov for Sunshine Week The Justice Department just launched the new FOIA.gov to inaugurate Sunshine Week –  the national celebration of open government and freedom of information. Sunlight Foundation’s Alex Howard has a positive review of the new site (which Archive staff contributed comments and feedback for during its alpha phase), concluding “FOIA.gov is […]

Just over a year ago, a Freedom of Information Act release by the National Park Service demonstrably proved that the President of the United States was lying about the size of his inauguration crowd.  That he was even elected president was, in part, because his opponent had improperly stored federal records on a personal server […]

Agencies Still Trying to Weaken the FOIA Federal agencies are still trying to restrict access to information and weaken the Freedom of Information Act in a variety of ways. With Sunshine Week – the annual, week-long celebration of access to information – around the corner, I wanted to highlight some of the most egregious ways […]

Federal Response to Hawaii Missile False Alert  Emails released through the FOIA give a detailed look at how the military responded to the false alert – sent by a Hawaii state official unaware that a drill was being conducted – that warned Hawaiians that a ballistic missile attack was imminent. The emails show the false […]