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Monday, March 30, 2009

FAA denial is for the birds

If you just watched basketball all weekend, you may have missed this great public-... make that would-be-public-records story about birds colliding with airplanes.

Birds brought down the passenger jet which crashed into the Hudson River earlier this year. According to the Associated Press article, the Federal Aviation Administration after the crash said it would make its database of bird strikes available to the public. Then the FAA reversed itself.

From the article:

The government agency argued that some carriers and airports would stop reporting incidents for fear the public would misinterpret the data and hold it against them. The reporting is voluntary because the FAA rejected a National Transportation Safety Board recommendation 10 years ago to make it mandatory.

You might be asking: Why do reporters need this database? We know there's a problem with birds at airports.

Yes, but do some airports have bigger bird problems than others? And are airports — and airlines — responding to the problems appropriately?

— NC

Labels: FOIA, secrecy

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Stimulus for government transparency

Two years later, it appears there will be someone to settle disputes between the federal government and citizens seeking information from it.

Congress this week approved $1 million to fund an ombudsman that will try to resolve disputes arising under the Freedom of Information Act.

In other words, if you request documents from the FBI, the Department of Defense, the the U.S. Forest Service or any other unit of the federal government, and are denied, you might be able to ask the ombudsman to review the case.

"This is an important step towards having a fully functioning FOIA ombudsman," said Rick Blum, coordinator of the Sunshine in Government Initiative. "For too many years, government transparency has been in crisis."

The ombudsman was created in 2007, but Congress and the Bush Administration did not supply fundiing for the post.

Labels: FOIA

Monday, February 23, 2009

The bad week that was

Thank God it's Monday. You don't hear that often, but after everything that happened to me last week on the records front, I want a fresh start.

I confess I don't like House Bill 122, though I'm trying to remember the arguments in favor of it. The bill passed the House last week, but it's still just a problem for another day.

Last week, I received word from the Ogden Records Board that it denied my appeal for certain employment records related to former police officer Ken Hammond. Ogden does not subscribe to the State Records Committee appeal system, so The Tribune has to file suit against the city if it wants to pursue this further. My bosses have not given me an indication the newspaper will do that.

The board's denial, a copy of which is attached below, probably ensures the pending criminal and civil court cases against Hammond will be the only vehicles for learning details of his time on the police force.

To ensure I would be beaten down by three levels of government, the feds sought to crush my spirits, too. The Mine Safety and Health Administration sent me a copy of a 2001 report about the Martin County Coal impoundment failure, which was one of my first FOIA requests to Obama Administration. The problem is: I asked for the 2003 report — which the government (now under two presidents) has been withholding from release.

And I'm not the only who had problems last week. Check out this article about meetings in Highland. In my experience, when one member of a governing body complains about transparency issues with the rest of the board, there's some kind of problem.

— NC

OgdenRecordsReviewBoardDecision.pdf

Labels: Crime, FOIA, GRAMA, Legislature, Obama, Open and Public Meetings Act

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Pretty shiny things

There are plenty of pretty shiny things to be found in Wikileaks' latest treasure trove -- a Congressional Research Service archive of nearly 7,000 nifty reports.

The reports aren't classified, but the CRS will only release the reports -- on everything from military machinery to agricultural subsidies -- to members of Congress. Those members sometimes make the reports available for public consumption, but until this month most collections of CRS reports were piecemeal, including only a few hundred reports.

Utah doesn't appear to get much attention from the CRS, however. Only one of the reports names the Beehive State in its title: "Utah Emergency Management and Homeland Security Statutory Authorities Summarized" -- and that study is as boring as its label suggests. It's basically just a handy-to-have list of statutes detailing who does what if Putin rears his ugly head and invades Salt Lake City.

Of perhaps greater interest to the open-government sickos who read this blog (OK, that would be the open government sickos who write this blog) is a report from last year on the status of FOIA and the efforts by the 109th and 110th Congresses to make it better (or worse, depending on how you look at the world.)

The full archive can be found here.
mdl

Labels: Congress, FOIA, leaks, spotlight site

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Change has come to... wait... hold the phone

Think the Obama Administration is going to arbitrarily let go of eight years of secrecy and executive power grabbing?

Wake up and smell the FOIAs..

The Justice Department You Can Believe In is defending Bush administration decisions to keep secret many documents about domestic wiretapping, data collection on travelers and U.S. citizens, and interrogation of suspected terrorists, writes the Associated Press.

"The signs in the last few days are not entirely encouraging," said Jameel Jaffer, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, told the AP.

Added a frustrated ACLU executive director Anthony Romero: "This is not change."

-mdl

Labels: FOIA, Obama

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Feds saying adios, au revoir to wrong immigrants

A Salt Lake City-based immigration task force approaches the home of suspected criminal immigrant last year. Below, an arrested suspect is taken to a detention center.

A Freedom of Information Act lawsuit has shed light on how immigration enforcers have been doing their job.

Documents suggest rather than finding the worst lawbreaking immigrants, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement just took the immigrants they could find. You can read the report from the Migration Policy Institute here.

The report discusses fugitive apprehension programs, such as those operated in Salt Lake City. The report relies heavily on documents obtained through suing ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under FOIA.

The report's conclusion says:

NFOP was established to further important goals: locating, apprehending, and removing fugitive aliens who endanger the nation or their communities. Congress has exponentially increased NFOP’s budget to enable ICE to achieve this mission.

Yet ICE’s own data indicate NFOP has failed to focus on the priorities it claimed in justifying its program to Congress. Since shifting the objective in January 2006 to 1,000 arrests per fugitive operations team, and crediting arrests of some nonfugitives towards this total, the program has apprehended the easiest targets, not the most dangerous ones.

— NC

Labels: Crime, FOIA

Monday, February 2, 2009

Numbers that make you care

Tell me which of these scenarios would most make you care.

A) A brutal crime is happening in your community.

B) A brutal crime is happening... somewhere. We're not really sure where.

I'm guessing your answer is A. But the U.S. Department of Justice seems to hope you'll be just as educated and empowered to act under B.

The real topic here is human trafficking. The justice department issued a report last month discussing this crime — which disproportionally affects women and helps fuel the sex trade and slave labor — and the rates of occurrence in the United States. You can find the report here.

But the report never breaks down the statistics to tell us how much this is happening from region to region and state to state. Utah has a justice department-funded task force and advocacy group to fight human trafficking, yet when I called the justice department to ask for Utah statistics, I was told they aren't available.

It's reasonable to know whether — or how much — we need to monitor human trafficking in Utah. It's one thing when a brutal crime occurs in some abstract setting. It's another thing when it happens where you live.

Below is a Freedom of Information Act request aimed at learning how much to care. Click here for a guide on signs someone you know may be trafficking victim.

— NC

* The photo is from a Michigan State University program discussing human trafficking.

HumanTraffickingFOIA.pdf

Labels: FOIA

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

That's better, Mr. President

A day after I complained his Website wasn't working, President Obama made open record nuts everywhere happy.

The new leader of the free world on Wednesday undid the previous president's orders closing presidential records and ordered federal agencies to lean on the side of openness when handling Freedom of Information Act requests. Click here to read the story.

Obama received immediate kudos from The Sunshine In Government Initiative. It issued a press release saying:

Yesterday's policy of 'When in doubt, leave it out,' today became, 'When it doubt, let it out.' And this policy will help keep the public informed in our technology-driven, connected society. On open government, the dawn is breaking.

— NC

Photo courtesy of The Associated Press.

Labels: FOIA, White House

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

This isn't a good start

That's the page I got when I tried to load the FOIA handbook for the White House office of Administration.

I'm trying to send President Obama his first requests under the Freedom of Information Act but I can't find up-to-date instructions for doing so. Maybe this lapse is a problem left over from the previous administration. (You know, the one that was in office this morning.) But here's hoping the new guys hop on this.

— NC

UPDATE: Below are copies of the FOIA requests I just sent the new administration.

HHSrequest.pdf

FOIAMSHA.pdf

ObamaRequest.012009.pdf

Labels: FOIA, White House

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Here it comes, Mr. President

Given I received exactly zero votes in my file-an-FOI-request contest, I'm going to send all four entries to Barack Obama when he is inaugurated on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, in the closing hours of the transition, articles and commentary continue to roll about how nontransparent the Bush Administration was and how the Obama administration can be beacons of light.

The latest, longest example is from the Columbia Journalism Review. A link to the article is here, but beware. It's long even for someone who really cares about this stuff.

— NC

— The photo is of then-Sen. Obama in Park City. It's courtesy of The Associated Press.

Labels: Candidates, FOIA

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Sunshine and energy

As the Bush administration draws to a close, the U.S. Energy Department is looking at tightening its FOIA rules, eliminating the “public interest” test for releasing information.

Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, and easily the best in the business when it comes to government secrecy, noted the proposed rule change last week on his blog.

The Federal Register proposal, “would remove the so-called ‘extra balancing test’… which states: ‘To the extent permitted by other laws, the DOE will make records available which it is authorized to withhold under [the FOIA] whenever it determines that such disclosure is in the public interest’.”

That balancing test, the DOE says, would allow the department to make then discretionary release of information that might not be required under FOIA if it is “in the public interest.”

But, as Aftergood points out, that’s not the way its worked at the Justice Department under the 2001 Ashcroft policy. “To the contrary,” he writes, “it promotes withholding of exempt information and promises to defend agencies whenever they legally withhold such information.”

DOE is now moving closer to the Justice Department regulation. Does it matter. Well. Yeah, writes Aftergood.

Earlier this year, the president sought agency recommendations for a Public Interest Declassification Board to improve the declassification process. Aftergood asked for the agency recommendations and only got them from one: The Energy Department.

— RG

Labels: FOIA

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Hanging up happy

I just got off the phone with the FOIA officer for a small U.S. Army command. Generally I leave these conversations in a huff, but today I hung up the phone with a big smile on my face -- even though it's still unclear when I'll be getting the documents I have requested.

Here's why:

1) I'm a sucker for southern accents, and she had an absolutely lovely drawl.
2) She told me that I had requested "a lot of information" but didn't act as though this was a crime.
3) She said, "FOIA is a public access law. Many people don't understand that."
4) She gave me an update on my request and promised to do what she could to get over the bureaucratic hurdles.

While I realize that not every FOIA officer can have a southern accent, if they simply treated me the way this woman did, today, I'd be happy.

- mdl

Labels: FOIA

Anyone seen $350 billion?

Roughly half of the financial bailout money has been spent with little or no accounting of where the money has gone, according to a coalition of taxpayer and government transparency advocates.

The coalition has sent Congress a letter, a PDF of which can be found here, urging disclosure. On the journalists side, Bloomberg has been leading the charge to find where the $700 billion bailout is going.

Meanwhile, OpenTheGovernment.org is compiling a rather unique clearinghouse. It's about what we don't know about the bailout.

— NC

Labels: Bailouts, Corporate America, FOIA

Sunday, December 7, 2008

More on CO poisonings at Lake Powell

When I returned from my Thanksgiving vacation, I found a package from the National Park Service waiting on my desk.

It was the final reports on a June accident at Lake Powell where eight people suffered carbon monoxide poisoning, one of whom died. I referenced the accident in an October article discussing the reliability of carbon monoxide alarms. I requested the reports weeks ago under the Freedom of Information Act.

The final reports included narrative descriptions of the scene and subsequent investigation, witness interviews and illustrations from the park service and U.S. Coast Guard. In all, the stack of documents was about 1 1/2 inches thick and appeared to be comprehensive.

The park service and Coast Guard reports indicated the Howeths were poisoned from a gasoline-powered generator which had a design flaw in its exhaust system. (Twin Anchors, which manufactured the Howeth's rented boat, does not concur with that conclusion and says more investigation is needed.)

Some of you reading about the Howeths might wonder if your houseboat, or the houseboat you plan to rent this summer, has the same exhaust system. That's unlikely, unless you have a Twin Anchors houseboat manufactured in 2006 or later, according to the documents.

Even then, Twin Anchors or Aramark, the houseboat vendor at Lake Powell, may have improved the exhaust system design after the Howeths were sickened.

One way to protect yourself against carbon monoxide poisoning from houseboat generators is to ask the rental agency, dealer or a mechanic whether the generator complies with standards established by the American Boat and Yacht Council.

But even that is no guarantee against suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning aboard a boat. It's important to know any vessel's exhaust systems, where carbon monoxide can accumulate and the best uses for carbon monoxide alarms.

— NC

Labels: FOIA

Friday, December 5, 2008

THE FOIA TERRORIST?

A little blast from the past. No doubt this woman is to blame for the fact that I'm just recently getting responses back to records requests I made in 2003, right?
-mdl

S.L. Woman's Quest Strains Public Records System
By Christopher Smith
(c)2003, The Salt Lake Tribune

WASHINGTON -- Working from her austere Salt Lake City apartment or a nearby public library for more than a decade, Barbara Schwarz has carpet-bombed every federal department and agency with thousands of requests for public records the government says don't exist.

With no legal training, she has filed dozens of lawsuits against thousands of federal employees around the country, claiming they have withheld information on her Utah hometown, which can't be found on any map.

And she has written hundreds of letters to the White House, demanding to know the whereabouts of a husband she contends was falsely imprisoned for her own murder.

A twisted plot, to be sure, but one that can be recited almost chapter and verse by a legion of civil servants and judges who have dutifully waded through pages of her screeds since they began appearing shortly after she moved to Salt Lake City in 1989 from Europe in search of a murky past.

The U.S. Department of Justice contends Schwarz has made more requests under the landmark public records statute known as the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) than any other person since it became law in 1966. A blueprint for open democracy and government accountability in other countries, the FOIA has been stretched to its limits by a reclusive woman who, by her own admission, is in the country illegally.

A Salt Lake Tribune review of federal court records and Justice Department annual reports on FOIA litigation shows at least one of Schwarz's lawsuits has been considered by a U.S. District or U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals somewhere in the nation every year since 1993. She also has filed unsuccessful appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1998 alone, Schwarz, who always acts as her own attorney and claims indigency to avoid paying court filing fees, had a caseload any rising lawyer would be proud of: 10 of her actions against the government were reviewed in federal courts in Utah, Maryland, West Virginia, Colorado, New York and the District of Columbia.

The slightly built woman in her late 40s with wavy dark hair rarely appears in court and has never won any of her lawsuits. One of her complaints filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., set a record for voluminous litigation at 2,370 pages, naming 3,087 defendants, all of whom were employed as FOIA or "Privacy Act" officers in the federal government. Some of those workers have dubbed her a "FOIA terrorist" and coined a verb reflective of her unending request letters: "Have you been Schwarzed today?"

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals based in Denver and the D.C. District Court each have ruled that Schwarz's FOIA requests are frivolous and a waste of government resources. Both courts have enjoined or drastically limited her right to file future appeals within either jurisdiction.

"Imaginary conspiracy":
The FOIA's "admirable purpose is abused when misguided individuals are allowed (in this case repeatedly) to submit requests to every agency and subdivision of the government, seeking information about an imaginary conspiracy," U.S. District Court Judge John Bates wrote in a September ruling against Schwarz in Washington.

The Justice Department has taken the unusual step of notifying all of the thousands of federal employees charged with administering the FOIA that until Schwarz satisfies outstanding search and copying charges she incurred from various federal agencies, they can legally deny her continued requests for records. While senior Justice Department officials acknowledge such governmentwide notification of what they term a "exceptional" requester has only happened once or twice before in the history of the law, they say Schwarz is being treated no differently than anyone else.

"In the case of any FOIA requester who defaults or reneges on a commitment to pay, whether he or she has made two requests or 2,000, there would be a basis for the request not to be acted upon until the default is corrected," said Daniel Metcalfe, co-director of the Justice Department's Office of Information and Privacy. "It's certainly true that when Ms. Schwarz brought suit against virtually every government agency and subpart, that created an interagency focus that otherwise might not have existed."

But Schwarz is not giving up. She says she can't. Every boilerplate rejection letter from the federal government only widens the circle of suspicion that spawns more requests. And until she knows the answers to her questions, she says she is incapable of moving on with her life.

"I have no money for this but I am forced to do it because the purpose of the law is to reveal, not conceal, and government should be transparent," she said in a recent interview in a Salt Lake City restaurant. "When I started this journey, I never imagined it would take so long."

That quest, according to a September 2001 governmentwide memo on Schwarz issued by the Office of Information and Privacy, is "all based on unique personal notions that, most charitably stated, are entirely fanciful in nature."

Schwarz believes she was born in approximately 1956 at a secretive government compound "submarine base" called Chattanooga on the Great Salt Lake, the alleged daughter of Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and the granddaughter of President Eisenhower, although there is no proof of any such place or relationship.

The ensuing story reads like a science fiction novel -- kidnapping by Nazis, mind control, conspiracy, hidden fortunes, faked deaths, insane asylums, cover-ups and microchips implanted in unsuspecting peoples' heads. Besides constantly referencing the tale in her FOIA requests and court filings, Schwarz has posted it in more than 80 parts on the Web newsgroup alt.religion.scientology.

"This is when people say, 'You're crazy,' " she says. "But I remember all those things so clearly, it's not like I just made it up. I need to know the truth of it and not to bury my perceptions."

That includes her belief she was once married to a man named Mark Rathbun who has been framed for her death and is being held somewhere in the United States, waiting for her to testify as his "relief witness" so that he can be cleared of the crime and the pair can be reunited.

Rathbun is, however, a high-ranking official of the Church of Scientology International, headquartered in Los Angeles. "We're clueless about this person and obviously she is delusional about Mr. Rathbun and she needs help," says Linda Simmons Hight, director of media relations for the church. "We're sorry for her."

When Schwarz is shown a recent photo of Rathbun from the church, she maintains it is not the same man she has asked the federal government to help her locate. She describes herself as a "nonorganized" scientologist who was "kicked out" of the church in Germany in the mid-1980s. University of Utah history professor Robert Goldberg, who has studied the subculture of conspiracy theorists, says Schwarz's manifestations seem based in the reality that the U.S. government does have a cult of secrecy. For instance, the federal Information Security Oversight Office's most recent study showed the number of government records classified as secret increased 44 percent in 2001 from the previous year, to more than 33 million.

Guarding secrets:
"The context here is the government loves to keep secrets and it guards those secrets very zealously," says Goldberg, author of Enemies Within: the Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America. "So when the federal government says you have everything we have on this subject and there's nothing, that only feeds more fuel to the fire in her soul."

Adding to the cycle of Schwarz's repeated requests is one of the virtues of the FOIA law: administrators are not to render judgment on the merits of the information being sought in a request. Those determinations only can be made at the judicial level once a requester loses an administrative appeal of a FOIA denial and files suit.

"Who's to say that one person's request has more validity than anyone else's?" says William Ferroggiaro, director of the Freedom of Information Project of the National Security Archive at George Washington University and president of the American Society of Access Professionals. "It's value neutral. In a way, she is using the law as it is intended even if her efforts cannot be characterized as anything but bizarre."

One of the other aspects of the FOIA law -- which has gained increased scrutiny in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- is that it may be used by citizens and foreign nationals alike. In some cases, fugitives of federal justice have filed FOIA requests and received responses, since only the courts may declare that a person who has flouted the laws of the land may not benefit from them.

Schwarz says she entered the United States on a visitor visa in the late 1980s and tried unsuccessfully for years to adjust her status with the Immigration and Naturalization Service before giving up. She says she has a German birth certificate but claims it was doctored to conceal that she was actually born in Utah.

Fighting INS:
"I have tried to get it worked out with the INS," says Schwarz. "They could probably arrest me or throw me out of the country for filing FOIA requests, but I'm not easily scared."

While the FOIA law is open to all, it does not guarantee free access to government information. Although Schwarz always requests that the standard fees for searching and copying records be deferred because she is poor and the request is in the public interest, a federal judge in the nation's capital ruled in 2001 that she didn't deserve a fee waiver because her disclosure would not "contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of the government."

As a result, the Department of Justice began tracking her outstanding FOIA bills and using those debts to disqualify further requests, beginning with a $16.80 balance due to the Salt Lake field office of the FBI.

"Anyone can see I'm not rich; I haven't bought new clothes for 12 years," says Schwarz, who does not hold a job or driver license and relies on a monthly stipend sent from relatives in Germany to pay for her rent, utilities and food. "I finally paid the FBI bill and two days later the chief counsel of the division said I owed $303.30 to the Veterans Administration. They are generating fees behind my back so they don't process my requests and it's spread to every agency."

To her, it's all part of the conspiracy.

"This circle is never going to close," says Goldberg. "Perhaps having this cause and mission gives her a will to live."

But Schwarz says being labeled a kook and an "FOIA terrorist" is not how she had hoped to find fame.

"It's not that this is my hobby and I don't have anything better to do," she says. "I would love to just write fiction and have a life. But I'm an optimist. I believe something will come my way that will end this."

Labels: FOIA

Thursday, November 27, 2008

G-Men stepping in time with 'Utah' Phillips

If you're a regular reader of this blog — And judging by the Web traffic, you're not. — you may remember this post from June.

The subject of that wayward Freedom of Information Act request was Bruce "Utah" Phillips. The FBI originally told me it did not have any files on Phillips at its Salt Lake City field office.

Then a couple weeks ago, a package from FBI record keepers in Virginia arrives on my desk. A file discussing Phillips was inside.

I called the FBI's FOIA hotline to ask why I received the earlier letter telling me nothing existed. A helpful gentleman at the hotline told me he did not know why the earlier letter was sent, but — hypothetically — the FBI may not have had a file on Phillips himself but did find references to Phillips in a different file.

That makes me want to request the entire file, a piece of which is found below.

— NC

PhillipsFBI.pdf

Labels: FBI, FOIA

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Bushwhackin'

President Bush may be a lame duck, but that doesn't mean public access watchdogs are going to let him fly away without a fight.

A federal judge on Monday said Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive could go ahead with their suit against the Bush administration in a case involving millions of missing e-mails.

The two groups claim that the White House didn't adequately preserve e-mails during the period of 2003 to 2005.

In his defense Bush said: "Oh, shucks guys, there wasn't anything interestin' goin' on during those years anyway!"

OK, actually the president hasn't even come up with that lame of an excuse. In fact, he hasn't come up with any excuse at all for the missing public records. Instead, his cronies contend that the courts don't have authority to review their compliance with public records law.

Checks and balances? We don't need no stinkin' checks and balances!

— ML

Labels: FOIA, open records, White House

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

So you wanted to be president, huh?

Don't peel off those "I Voted" stickers yet. There's one more campaign to decide.

What's going to be my first Freedom of Information Request to President Obama?

That's right. I'm not going to waste time. Come Jan. 20, as soon as Obama lowers his right hand and takes his left one off the Bible, I'm putting an FOIA request into the mailbox or fax machine and sending it to a federal agency in the Executive Branch.

Congratulations on reaching the White House, President-elect Obama. My colleagues and I will be bothering you a lot to find out what's going on in there.

The question is what to request? Here are some ideas I'm kicking around and some suggestions from others. But I would like your ideas and input. Type them here or e-mail me at ncarlisle@sltrib.com.

— NC

— A detailed accounting of expenses incurred during the presidential transition. How much does it cost to change the letterhead, anyway?

— Rick Blum, coordinator of the Sunshine In Government Initiative, suggested requesting the "names of organizations and individuals participating in meetings to craft the new administration's energy task force." This is something Dick Cheney refused to disclose when he convened an energy policy. Blum says the new administration may form a similar body. Wouldn't you like to know if there's a representative from the oil shale or waste disposal industry, Utah?

— Travel expenses and reimbursements for former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt. This is a Utah angle that the Obama administration might even rush for us given the then-former secretary suddenly finds himself in the "other party." Leavitt's had a little trouble with travel.

— Ellen Smith, the managing editor of Mine Safety and Health News, recommended requesting a 2003 Department of Labor report on the Martin County Coal impoundment failure. Smith says the Bush Administration prematurely stopped the investigation into a disaster that was larger than the Exxon Valdez oil spill. This topic might not be so far removed from Utah's own concerns about mining and industrial waste safety.

— The FBI file for late Utah Gov. Calvin Rampton. I've been meaning to send this anyway. Dead people can make for interesting reading.

Photo by The Associated Press.

Labels: Candidates, FOIA

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Hinckley and the FBI

Below you can find a PDF of the Gordon B. Hinckley FBI file. Here's what it took to get it:

I filed the Freedom of Information request the morning after Hinckley died. Such FBI files are supposed to become public upon the subject's death. (Check out the Evil Knievel file sometime.)

A few weeks later, FBI headquarters replied with a letter saying... You ready for this?... it needed proof Hinckley was dead!

My original letter included the URL for Hinckley's obituary in The Tribune, but apparently the house that J. Edgar Hoover built isn't so keen on 21st Century technology... or television or radio or large newspapers — all of which devoted coverage to Hinckley's death. Instead, the FBI instructed me to send a death certificate or a hard copy of an obituary.

Wanting to vent, I called the FBI office in Salt Lake City. The chief division counsel at the office (he had nothing to do with the letter from headquarters) was sympathetic and helpful. In passing, he mentioned: "We helped with security for the funeral."

So, to recap: The FBI wanted proof of death for someone whose funeral it attended.

I sent another request — this time with hard copies of some obituaries. From there, I called the FBI's FOIA processing center every few weeks inquiring about my request's status.

By the way, I learned last week The Tribune has other old FBI files dealing with various aspects of the LDS Church. I'm pushing for us to scan them and post them here on The Vault, just like the Hinckley file.

— NC

Hinckley-FBI.pdf

Labels: FBI, FOIA, LDS Church

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Writing from records

The envelope arrived Monday. The return label indicated it was from Air Combat Command -- but it was thin.

Too thin, I thought, to contain the 178-page report I'd been told to expect "any day." Another bureaucratic form letter, no doubt, probably something like: Dear Mr. LaPlante, Thanks for your Freedom of Information Act Request. Screw you.

I almost kicked myself Tuesday when I called up The Air Force Times online. Somehow, The Times had obtained the records I'd been waiting on for seven months. Worse, they were first out the gate with a story about an investigation into something that happened in my backyard -- an accidental strafing at the Utah Test and Training Range that nearly killed two soldiers.

My thoughts shot back to the envelope on my desk at work. I did Mach II to the office. Sure enough, the letter contained a CD which, in turn, held the 178 page report -- in pdf form.

Duh!

Air Force Times - 1, Matthew D. LaPlante - 0.

There's nothing good about getting scooped. But it does present a challenge: "Now that the story's out there, how can I improve on it?"

With 178 pages to work from, the possibilities were endless.

Like a kid into a jigsaw puzzle box, I dove into the reports. Picking out a piece here and a piece there, I first sought to build the border -- the better to understand the big picture. From there, I began working inward, connecting piece to piece until the story emerged.

There is a point in puzzle building when you find the piece that brings everything together. For me it was this: During the investigation, both soldiers mentioned that the sports utility vehicle in which they were driving "exploded" just as one of them was reaching down for the radio.

A mundane action that would have been lost in the tides of thousands of other mundane actions was now deeply seared into their memories. "That's it," I said aloud. "That's my piece."

A few hours later, this photo ran at www.sltrib.com:

Along with this story.

Labels: FOIA, Hill Air Force Base

Friday, October 17, 2008

Carbon monoxide and alarms

Utah's medical and public safety community has been educating the public about carbon monoxide for years, but I never heard any concern about the alarms designed to safeguard people.

That changed in early August when I heard about a notice concerning the same kind of alarms found aboard a houseboat in which eight people were poisoned. The alarms' manufacturer had issued a notice saying the devices may not sound for low concentrations of carbon monoxide.

Then I learned about a Coast Guard study finding problems with alarms. I got curious.

With support from my editors, I started digging into carbon monoxide alarms. Here's the other documents I used to investigate:

— A preliminary report from the National Park Service. Rangers investigating the June poisoning at Lake Powell discovered there had been a notice concerning the alarms.

— Consumer Product Safety Commission's Website. Type a product name into site's search engine and you can find related documents.

— Consumer Product Safety Commission database. This is a database of consumer complaints, documented problems and deaths and injuries caused by products. The data is maintained by the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting.

— Assorted studies. The investigating agency or firm was usually nice enough to provide me a free copy.

I also have Freedom of Information requests pending to a few federal agencies. Follow-up stories might be coming.

— NC

Labels: FOIA

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Happy returns

Here's what makes a reporter happy: Having a record request finally pay off!

The file I'm holding is from the FBI. Zoom to read the subject line and you'll figure out why I'm particularly proud of this one.

The Tribune will publish an article about the contents this weekend.

— NC

Photo by Paul Fraughton of The Tribune staff

Labels: FBI, FOIA

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Anchor dropped on bloggers

Imagine receiving a bill for $18,000 just because you don't work for "legitimate media."

That's the bill the U.S. Coast Guard sent two bloggers, according to another blog — this one on the Website of WIRED*. There's no word on whether that blog is "legitimate media."

We at (WIRED) DANGER ROOM cried foul. All sorts of news organizations now recognize bloggers as leading practionioners in the journalism field. And isn't there a bit of a contradiction, launching a "social media" push while denying legitimate requests from social media journalists?

This gets even more interesting when you read what documents the two bloggers requested.

Here in Utah, there's been discussion of whether to recognize bloggers as "legitimate media." That discussion centers on another potential government boondoggle: the Utah State University football team.

* I'm borrowing this photograph from WIRED, too.

— NC

Labels: FOIA

Monday, September 29, 2008

Ask the candidate

A columnist for The Capital Times of Wisconsin offers a good set of open-government questions voters can ask candidates this season. The complete column can be found here, but I've pasted a sample below.

Do you favor disclosure of communications between the White House and agencies regarding administrative decision-making and information disclosure?

What are the appropriate limits of executive privilege in the disclosure of information?

Federal law protects only corporate whistle-blowers who reveal financial abuses. Should the law be expanded to protect the rights of private-sector workers who report violations of public health and safety laws?

How can we ensure public access to health and safety information?

At the state and local levels, government still throws up many obstacles. Problems include overcharging for records, delays in responding to open records requests, problems getting police and prosecution information. Legislators provide information about bill drafts to some interest groups while withholding information to other groups or members of the public, and they are
trying to limit access to court records online.

Meanwhile, local officials abuse laws allowing closed meetings, particularly when discussing economic development. Ask your local representatives about policies regarding closed meetings for economic development.

— NC

Labels: Candidates, FOIA, Open and Public Meetings Act, open records

Monday, September 15, 2008

Green sunshine

Here's a column that asks how transparent Sarah Palin would be as vice president.

Meanwhile, count me among those who had no idea the Green Party candidate for president visited Salt Lake City earlier this month. But when I found out, after the fact, I sprung to action.

I e-mailed the Cynthia McKinney campaign and immediately asked what I've asked other presidential campaigns: What are your views on the Freedom of Information Act and have you ever filed an FOIA request?

The McKinney campaing called me within 15 minutes!

A spokesman told me McKinney favors an open government and pointed out McKinney, while she represented Georgia in Congress, sponsored two bills which would have made records public: The Martin Luther King, Jr., Records Collection Act and the Tupac Shakur Records Release Act.

As you can guess, the Shakur Act would have released documents concerning the death of the rap star. The King Act would have released early documents relevant to the King assassination. Neither bill passed committee.

The spokesman did not know, off hand, whether McKinney had ever filed an FOIA request but said he would find out and get back to me. That was 11 days ago. Hey, she may be a minor candidate but she's still a politician.

— NC

Labels: Candidates, FOIA

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Of Rats and Men

Under a new rule being considered by Utah's federal courts, records revealing that a criminal defendant has entered into a plea bargain with prosecutors would be hidden from the public.

The proposed rule comes as a response to growing concerns that criminals might target so-called "rats" for retribution. But critics like open government advocate Jeff Hunt have called the measure "an unjustified reaction" that "sweeps too broadly" and "goes far beyond what is warranted." (But tell us what you really think, Jeff!)

And in an editorial, The Provo Daily Herald warned that the case could "diminish public trust in the judicial system and potentially lay the groundwork for abuse." The newspaper noted that members of the public, unaware of the details of a plea arrangement, might conclude that prosecutors are going too light on criminals who, in fact, are secret rats. Not to be outdone by Hunt's persuasive prose, the Herald noted that "secret courts are one of the most feared weapons of any dictator." Whoa.

A few years ago, the city of Sandy tried to prevent the names of all of its law enforcement officers from being made public, arguing that police officers could be retaliated against by those they've arrested. That's a red herring, The Salt Lake Tribune successfully argued before the State Records Committee. After all, those who commit offenses don't need to do a public records search to find out which officer brought them to justice.

In this case, the same logic applies. Criminals don't need to file a FOIA to find out the names of the rats. They already know: It's the guy who was charged with the same offenses as you were but walked out of court a free man on the same day you went to prison. And if this rule is approved, criminals will have a new way of finding the rats: They'll be the guys whose plea hearing documents have been sealed.

-- mdl

Labels: court records, FOIA

'Indicators of growing secrecy'

The OpenTheGovernment.org has released its annual report on government secrecy.

For a PDF of the full report, click here. A press release with a short summary is below.

But in a sign that maybe things aren't so bad at the local level, there's an interesting story in The Washington Post about expenses submitted by Sarah Palin during her time as Alaska governor. The article represents a good use of public records.

-- NC

Press Release

Contact: Amy Fuller or Patrice McDermott, 202-332-6736

Report: Continued Expansion of Federal Government Secrecy Seen in 2007

WASHINGTON, Sept. 9, 2008 — Government secrecy increased across a wide spectrum of indicators in 2007, according to a report released today by a coalition of over 70 open government advocates. At the same time, the 110th Congress has moved toward increasing openness and accountability.

The findings of the 2008 Secrecy Report Card, produced annually by OpenTheGovernment.org to identify trends in public access to government information, include:

• Almost 22 million FOIA requests were received, an increase of nearly 2 percent over last year;

• The 25 departments and agencies that handle the bulk of FOIA requests failed to make a dent in their backlogs, although they received the fewest requests since reporting began in 1998; and

• The number of original classification decisions increased slightly after dropping two consecutive years, and the number of derivative classifications increased by almost 13 percent.

• According to Patrice McDermott, Director of OpenTheGovernment.org, “These trends indicate that citizens will have to wait even longer to know what their government is doing.” The report also cites indicators of growing secrecy, including:

• The government spent $195 maintaining the secrets already on the books for every one dollar the government spent declassifying documents, a 5 percent increase in one year.

• 18 percent of the requested Department of Defense (DOD) acquisition funding is for classified, or “black,” programs. Classified acquisition funding has more than doubled in real terms since FY 1995.

• $114.1 billion of federal contract funding was given out without any competition. On average since 2000, fully and openly competed contracts have dropped by almost 25 percent

• Federal surveillance activity under the jurisdiction of the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has risen for the 9th consecutive year—more than double the amount in 2000.

“The current administration continues to refuse to be held accountable to the public,” said McDermott. “In recent years, polls have shown that a growing number of Americans believe the federal government is secretive—terrible news for our democracy. Until we restore openness and accountability to the federal government, it will be impossible to win back the
public’s trust.”

Labels: Candidates, FOIA, secrecy

Monday, August 25, 2008

The new administration will have mail

Leftover work for the next president:

— Iraq

— Economy

— Find lost e-mails

OK, so the last item won't receive as much attention as the first two, but according to a White House memo, the next commander in chief will play a role in a mini-drama over the Bush Administration and e-mails.

Here's a briefing on the dispute that will water the mouths of political junkies and techno geeks. Here's my condensed version:

The federal government is suppose to archive its e-mail. The Bush Administration has had trouble doing this, it says, because of technical problems related to converting to new technology. A couple groups sued to force the archiving.

In the middle of all this, a federal judge ruled the White House Office of Administration did not have to respond to requests under the Freedom of Information Act, even though the White House itself does.

Now, we are hearing there is a plan to recovery up to 225 days of e-mails from 2002 and 2003 but the recover will run into 2009, leaving the issue for the next president.

-- nc

Labels: Candidates, FOIA

Monday, August 18, 2008

FOI, First Amendment advocate dies at 74

Journalists and open government supporters today are mourning the death of Jack Landau. Even if you haven't heard of him, you've benefitted from his work.

In 1970, Landau joined Ben Bradlee and Mike Wallace, among others, in forming the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. The committee has fought to prevent journalists from being subpoenaed and for freedom of information issues.

Read more from The Washington Post.

Or from the Associated Press.

-- nc

Labels: FOIA

Monday, July 28, 2008

Irony: 'Bob Barr Blackout Watch'

If you're a regular reader of the comment boards on SLTRIB.com, you're probably anti-Mormon, anti-gun, want every Hispanic to return to Mexico (even if the person's family immigrated from Guatemala four generations ago), livid at the Democrats, livid at the Republicans or you just like reading all the messages from people who fall into one of these categories and wonder what bunker these crazies live in.

You've probably also seen comments like this one.

At July 29, 2008 9:10 AM , tyrannicide said...
Tribune's Bob Barr Blackout Watch: It's been 64 days since the Libertarian Party nominated Bob Barr as its presidential candidate, but the Salt Lake Tribune has yet to report this news in its print edition.

This poster has been railing on the newspaper for not reporting on Barr's candidacy. I can't speak for the entire Tribune, but I get the point. And I like the tenacity shown by "tyrannicide."

But here's the funny thing, I'm waiting on some Barr news, too. No, not in the news pages. Barr is on the list of presidential candidates who haven't responded to my inquires about stances on the Freedom of Information Act.

I'm also waiting to hear from the campaigns of John McCain, Barack Obama and Ralph Nader. The only candidate to respond has been the Chuck Baldwin campaign on the Constitution Party ticket.

McCain and Obama receive lots of press inquiries, so I'm not offended they're choosing to blow me off. Nader keeps himself busy always.

But, and "tyrannicide" should back me up on this, Barr obviously isn't busy with reporters' questions and should have replied by now.

— NC

Labels: Candidates, FOIA

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Constitution, FOIA party

Any half-ass reporter can tell you what the major-party presidential candidates say about a topic. Let's get to the other guys.

Here's what Chuck Baldwin, the Constitution Party candidate for president, says about the Freedom of Information Act.

From: mary@baldwin2008.com
Subject: Chuck Baldwin on FOIA
Date: July 14, 2008 4:53:30 PM MDT
To: ncarlisle@sltrib.com

Nate,

Chuck Baldwin strongly believes government should be transparent and devoid of secrecy, except in matters concerning bona fide national security issues. Never having filed a FOIA request, Baldwin maintains Americans who do seek information from government records and departments have the right to expect information in a reasonable amount of time.

Baldwin believes that excessive secrecy is not beneficial for the country and it encourages deceit. Chuck Baldwin would work to make the FOIA less cumbersome, with elected officials and governmental agencies acknowledging that they operate as employees of the American people and have no overiding right to hide matters relating to the operation of their governmental offices.

With estimates showing that upwards of 400,000* new secrets are created each year just at the TOP SECRET level, and estimates that the government has billions of pages of classified material, Baldwin espouses accountability that can only be achieved when government knows it cannot hide behind “classified” documents.

If you'd like any further clarification, let me know.

Sincerely,
Mary Starrett

Baldwin 2008

* This footnote is mine. That figure originated with a report from the Information Security Oversight Office for the year 1995.

Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for the McCain and Obama campaigns to reply to my requests to give or clarify their positions on FOIA.

--nc

Labels: Candidates, FOIA

Monday, July 14, 2008

Dear Senator Obama:...

Of the two major presidential candidates, Barack Obama is the only one for whom I can find a position paper on the Freedom of Information Act and open government issues.

The paper, which you can find here, offers the following on FOIA.

...Barack Obama would restore the tradition of free information by issuing an Executive Order that information should be released unless an agency reasonably foresees harm to a protected interest.

Well, OK. But agencies are already supposed to release information unless it falls under numerous exemptions. Obama's position paper does not define a "protected interest."

Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a memorandum that seemed to expand what one would call a "protected interest." The memo has been much maligned in the FOI world while some have said the directives are necessary to maintain national security. Would Obama rescind the memo?

On Thursday, I sent this e-mail to the Obama campaign.

I have read the Senator's position paper on the Freedom of Information Act. Can you please tell me what the candidate considers a "protected interest." Would he rescind the John Ashcroft memo restricting documents under FOIA?

Also, has Senator Obama ever filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act or a state record law? If so, what was the senator's experience?

I am not working on a deadline but would appreciate a response in the next week. Thank you.

I asked whether Obama has made FOI requests because . . . well, I just couldn't resist. I'll let you know what he says.

-- nc

Labels: Candidates, FOIA

Monday, July 7, 2008

'Missed Opportunity'

From the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government:

A just completed study by the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government shows that federal departments and agencies made little progress in responding to Freedom of Information Act requests, despite a two-year-old presidential directive to improve service. The report, “An Opportunity Lost”, says agencies cut staff and FOIA spending in 2007 and as a result failed to take advantage of a sharp fall off in FOIA requests to make significant reductions in the backlog of unprocessed requests.

For the report and more, go to www.cjog.net.

Labels: FOIA

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Kids' names

Twice this week, Tribune justice reporters had problems obtaining the most basic information about a victim: a name.

These weren't any victims. They were children. The respective police agencies thought that meant they should not just give out the information.

In the first case, a 17-year-old girl died in an ATV crash in Sanpete County. The sheriff's office declined to release her name and suggested we watch the obituaries. A central Utah radio station reported the name and I confirmed it with a telephone call to the teenager's family.

The second case was a 17-month-old girl who drowned in Sugar House Park. Salt Lake City police declined to give us the girl's name over the telephone, as they do most adult victims, and suggested we file an open-records request. I then spoke with an attorney for the city who told me I should file a record request when it's suggested I do so, but read me the name in this instance.

Government agencies are reluctant to discuss children, and I understand why. It's human nature to protect kids. Lawmakers in Utah and most states have codified the instinct by closing to the public documents in child welfare matters and some juvenile court cases. News outlets are protective, too. The Tribune typically does not name child victims or even criminal suspects who are children as the newspaper would adults.

But it's a different matter when a child dies. Utah law does not require a dead child name's be kept secret. Neither does federal law.

In 2006, the National Park Service refused to release the names of child drowning victims on Lake Powell. The Tribune made administrative appeals and it resulted in the Park Service making agency-wide regulations requiring name disclosure.

************************

And now some easy news

A few weeks ago, I wrote the city governments of Salt Lake City, Ogden, Logan, Orem, Provo, Cedar City and St. George and asked for any audits, conducted within the last two years, on their respective fire and police departments.

The requests were answered on time with the cities providing me the documents or telling me where I could find them. Yeah, so I didn't exactly ask for the Pentagon Papers, but with that many towns, I figured there would be one holdout and there was not.

-- nc

Labels: FOIA, GRAMA, secrecy, SLC

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Freedom of information, shredding

I guess I'm not the only one that has some problems obtaining records from the FBI.

But as I read this column from Alex Heard, I did more than cringe at the idea of losing valuable records. I also gained an appreciation for the complexity of keeping and organizing everything the FBI does.

There're records kept at FBI headquarters, in field offices across the country and at foreign embassies and consulates and, if Heard's valid point is realized, perhaps other storage facilities. Read the file below and notice how many places I sent the FBI probing when I was trying to find documents on the FLDS leaders.

When you're done reading the Heard column, do yourself a favor and check out the list of categories used to organize FBI files. Try not to giggle when you realize G-Men had to create a filing system for "Interstate Transportation of Lottery Tickets" and "Excess Profits on Wool."

-- nc

The photo illustration is borrowed from The Slate column by Heard. Rulon-FBI-files052207.pdf

Labels: FBI, FOIA

FOIA in the Internet Age

There was a time, not so long ago, when you could only serve a Freedom of Information Act request via the mail.

Thank goodness those days are gone, because frustrating exchanges like the one I had today -- I was told by the Air Force's Air Combat Command that I needed to send a request to Hill Air Force Base; Hill then told me I needed to send the request to the ACC -- used to take months.

Today, via e-mail, it took only about a day to work out the problem.

At least, I think it's worked out ...

-- mdl

Labels: DOD, FOIA, Hill Air Force Base

Friday, June 20, 2008

Go there to get here

One of my first posts on this blog was about a problem I encountered while requesting records from the FBI. And so it goes again.

I have been trying to obtain old FBI files — if there are any — on a now deceased Utah figure. (I won't say who. I'm afraid of tipping off the competition, even though our Web site folks assure me hardly anyone reads this blog.)

Citing the Freedom of Information Act, I filed a records request with the FBI field office in Salt Lake City. The office forwarded my request to headquarters in Washington, D.C., and within in a couple weeks — quick turnaround in the FOI world — I received a response. There were no responsive records in Salt Lake City.

OK, fair enough. But my subject also lived in California. What records are there?

I filed a request with the FBI field office in Sacramento on Thursday. Friday I received a phone call from that field office. An FBI agent told me that I needed to send that request to Washington, D.C.

Wait a minute. The Salt Lake City field office accepts my requests, I said. Why can't your office?

The agent told me the bureau's FOIA guidelines say requests should be sent to headquarters. He was polite but firm on this topic. He suggested my written request say ask the FBI to look for records in Sacramento — where I already sent a request.

— NC

Labels: FBI, FOIA

Friday, June 13, 2008

LeRoy, Rulon and the FBI

Today's article about the old FBI investigation into the FLDS leadership relied on documents I acquired under the Freedom of Information Act. But the acquisition didn't go smoothly.

In January, 2007, I made my first request to the FBI asking for their files on LeRoy S. Johnson and Rulon T. Jeffs, two former prophets of the FLDS. They've been dead for years and files maintained by the federal government usually are subject to disclosure once the subject dies. (Check out the list of famous corpses in the FBI reading room.)

On March 29, 2007, I received a letter from the FBI saying it had no files on Johnson. Then, less than a month later, I received a telephone call from the FBI employee processing my request for Jeffs' files. She told me that in searching for Jeffs documents, she found pages discussing Johnson. The employee sounded annoyed that no one had found them earlier.

The first batch of documents arrived in July. The FBI redacted some names and omitted entire pages because they were concerned with violating the privacy of the people who are still alive. In some cases, the government said, papers had been destroyed years ago. But I used the information in the documents to make additional requests. I asked for the entire files referenced in the information about Johnson and Jeffs.

The back-and-forth continued until January, when the U.S. Department of Justice claimed it had no more documents it could give me. In all, I received a couple hundred pages.

-- nc

Labels: FBI, FOIA, Polygamy

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Richard Nixon: Saint of Open Records

This op-ed by historian and researcher Michael Dobbs is a great lament for more openness in American government and a fantastic explanation of why voters should ask candidates about transparency issues. But it's the last few paragraphs that blew me away!

Of all the U.S. presidents Dobbs has experienced, he credits Richard Nixon for his willingness to place historical records in the public domain. Nixon?

The guy who during Watergate refused to disclose just about anything, fired investigating attorneys general like they were Billy Martin and used the executive branch to try to intimidate The Washington Post out of doing its job? That Nixon?

The black and white photo, courtesy of Utah State Archives, is Nixon (center) campaigning in Utah in 1968 with Sen. Arthur Watkins and Gov. George D. Clyde .

-- nc

Labels: Candidates, FOIA

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

FOIA in Any Language

Want to know the annual budget for the Bulgarian Department of Transportation? . . . Assuming Bulgaria has a department of transportation.

Here's a Website that can help you find it. It's the National Freedom of Information Coalition's collection of international freedom of information laws.

And apparently the record laws in some countries can work as well as the ones we have here in the home of the free. I typed "Freedom of Information Act" into a Google News search engine on Friday. Articles from foreign news sites comprised almost the entire yield.

In a speech in February at an international conference on the right to public information, human rights advocate Diego Garcia Sayan said: ". . . more than half of the current (public records) laws worldwide were passed after 2000, showing the momentum that this new thinking has gained recently."

But the sunshine has not spread around the globe. The Carter Center, which sponsored the February conference, said:

"Numerous countries with once vibrant and robust access to information legislation are now in retreat, while the passage of new laws has slowed and implementation efforts are often insufficient. "

"Moreover, it remains unclear that the myriad benefits of the right to information are in fact reaching the most disadvantaged people and promoting the anticipated societal transformations."

-- nc

Labels: FOIA, NFOIC

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Turning FOIA into Fertilizer

There's lots of news coverage about the farm bill passed by both houses of Congress in veto-proof majorities. The agriculture policy blog, Mulch, this week shined light on a provision in the legislation creating a new exemption to the Freedom of Information Act.

The provision prohibits the disclosure of certain information provided by farmers who are applying for farm subsidies. A federal appeals court in February ordered such data released, Mulch reports, but this provision negates that ruling.

Farm subsidies have long been hot topics in agriculture. In Utah, such famously not-so-needy farmers as Larry H. Miller have received farm subsidies. The appellate ruling might have given public access to Miller's application and told us why he thought he deserved government aid.

"There are bureaucrats who feel this is something that should be kept private and there are a lot of farmers who feel that way," Ken Cook, Mulch's lead writer, told me in an interview.

Lots of other applications for government grants and aid are public records.

-- nc

Labels: FOIA

Friday, May 2, 2008

FOIA off the hook

Never mind trying to get documents and records from the government. How about giving me the right phone number?

Recently, I tried to check the status of two record requests I have pending with the FBI. I called the phone number for the FOIA Requester Service Center.

A gentlemen answered the phone and said I called the records management division. Things went awry from there.

This is not the phone number I should call to check on the status of my requests under the Freedom of Information Act, the man said.

So if that number is wrong, where should I call?

"I don't know, sir," was the reply.

The next day, FBI Public Liaison Nancy L. Steward called and was helpful in updating me on the status of my requests. Then I told her about what happened when I called the service center.

Steward called back again and said another section had someone incorrectly using the service center phone line. She said the problem would be fixed. I called the service center line on Monday and was able to check my request this time.

If you want to check on the status of your FOIA request to the FBI, the service center's telephone number is 540-868-4591. Steward's number is 540-868-4516.

— NC

Labels: FBI, FOIA

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Who Needs Sunshine?

On KSL-TV to speak about our newspaper's recent exposé on Sandy's hidden bonus program, anchor Bruce Lindsay asked me why the public should care about public records laws, since such statute mostly are utilized by journalists -- who, as he pointed out, aren't exactly breaking the mercury on the public's love-o-meter.

Here's one good reason: In Washington on Thursday a bi-partisan duo of congressmen introduced legislation that would provide healthcare to veterans who were unknowingly subjected to biological and chemical weapons tests.

Those tests, known as Project 112, were run secretly out of a Utah Army base for decades -- and denied for decades more, despite reports from participating veterans that they were being stricken with unusual diseases.

What shook loose the veil of secrecy -- and ultimately led to this proposed legislation? A Freedom of Information Request by veterans groups in support of service members who felt they'd been wronged.

-mdl

Labels: DOD, FOIA, Sandy

Sunday, April 27, 2008

"Perfecting your request"

Under a new Freedom of Information Act reform law signed by President Bush on New Year's Eve, federal agencies that don’t respond to FOIA requests within a 20-day period will face stiffer penalties.

As a reporter who routinely uses FOIA, and one who has grown accustomed to receiving responses to requests for public documents years after I ask, I am watching closely for signs of improvement in the system.

When I hadn't hear anything back from one defense agency after sending it a request for records on April 3, I figured that it might just be business as usual. Then, on April 24, I received a phone call. An official from the agency told me that there had been some confusion regarding who in her office was going to handle my request. She apologized and said that they would be "getting to it" as soon as possible.

"So, do you still want everything you asked for in the request?" the official asked me.

I told her I did.

The next day I received an e-mail from the official, which "documents the phone conversation we had on April 24, 2008, regarding the scope of your request."

The scope of my request?

"... the beginning of the 20-day statutory time frame is April 24, 2008, the date we perfected your request."

And just like that, a 20-day response window turned into a 40-day response window.

As overworked federal FOIA offices seek to stay within the confines of the new law, I'm expecting more "do you still want everything you asked for" calls and more follow-up e-mails with language such as "the day we perfected your request."

- mdl

Labels: DOD, FOIA

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