I'm not sure that the handling of a single document, especially one that happens to be about intelligence gathering procedures, should be THE standard by which we judge transparency.
Seems this isn't particularly unusual for the last few years.
This "most transparent administration in history" by far isn't.
The notably weird thing here is that they released a completely redacted document rather than just declining the request. Is there some minimum amount of text required to be considered a response?
Politics aside, this is certainly one of the strangest things I've seen in a while.
Yeah it's a little weird, but out of the context of other FOIA requests it doesn't make much of a point.
Now, as to what it meets the hurdle for statistical significance for . . . well, I personally prefer to avoid conspiracy theories when possible. So I'll just be keeping an eye open for more information.
Out of curiosity, have you filed any FOIA requests?
There was sensitive information in the document that happened to be 100% of the contents, this was redacted. They now cannot be sued for not responding.
Is it a defensible position to assume that 100% of a document was excised as sensitive data? Since the subject of the memo itself is announced clearly, are we to believe that the presentation of the term "message" which almost certainly occurred one or more times in the body text was sensitive? What about harmless pronouns, conjunctions, articles, etc?
If a citizen were to reply to a government request of information from the government in the same manner, few would be surprised at legal consequences (penalties, incarceration) as a result. Actions such as this, in response to a legitimate request from the public allowed under law, can only serve the purpose of undermining confidence in the rule of law.