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Comment by arh68 | Hacker News Reader

If the information is public, what's the difference? Any citizen could issue the same request and get the same list. You say it's "their data" but the point of FOIA is to free the data. Would it be wrong to publish a page from the White Pages listing names and phone numbers?

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My point about it being their data to track was in regard to the tone of this whole topic... like "holy shit the FBI is tracking the people that make a lot of FOIA requests!" not any sort of ownership of the data. Who cares that they keep a list of people who make requests? I'm not even sure how they would go about fulfilling the requests if they didn't keep some sort of lists. And sure anyone can request the list. But a lot of arguments against mass surveillance are rooted in the idea that technology has made it far easier today to track someone than it was years ago. So the issue seems to be more along the lines of "it is just too easy now so we need to stop it". So now... this published doc makes it all too easy to get the info... compared to everyone who wanted to know requesting it themselves. I see a bit of hypocrisy in this. But that is just my opinion of the situation.

It could lead to discriminisation of people (or topics). They should not keep the information about who requested what any longer than needed to fulfill the request.

I wouldn't be surprised if they were required to keep the info for auditing purposes to report on how many FOIA requests they get, if they responded in a timely manner, etc. If they dumped that info, I can see another group of people all pissed off that the government is hiding the stats about the whole FOIA request/response procedure. It really doesn't matter what the government does... there is always going to be some group of people that will complain about it.

Ok, so the topic might be worth keeping. But your examples show no need for keeping the identification of the requester.

I think I understand where you're coming from. It comes down to motive for identification. When 4chan/reddit decide to dox some poor stranger, it usually has specific intent: ruin their life, or get revenge. This is bad. When gov't orgs keep docs on people, it becomes very important to be clear on what their motives are. Are they doing it to avoid disasters? If so, good. Are they doing it to criminalize, to build evidence against (strictly against, and never for), to prosecute & convict? If so, it could be okay (as long as the law is fair, etc). Or are they doing it to specifically marginalize these people, to restrict their freedom (like their freedom to file FOIAs)?

In this case, the author didn't present any call to action. This is good. I hope nobody throws eggs at any houses, but I don't think this link promoted anything like that. More to the point, the request specifically how being on such a list affects processing requests from listed requesters. This would very much clarify & resolve the questions above.

Yes, the link itself is just to the request/response info so it is presented without comment. But in the last few months, how many submissions to HN about the FBI, NSA, etc have been of the "cool... look at all the good these people are doing" variety? Not (m)any. While I did make the assumption that this submission was of the "holy shit look what they're up to now" type... I don't think it was too presumptuous to think the submitter was expecting people to be outraged about it (but not calling for people to throw eggs, per se).

I am curious what they use the list for. If it was used to set their future requests to a lower priority, I'm fine with that as long as the request gets fulfilled according to the requirements. If they just dust binned their future requests then I'd have issue with that. If they sent SWAT to their houses for no other reason than "excessive" FOIA requests then we'd have a real big problem. It kind of looks like it is for collecting fees... which is kind of boring.

You're generalizing the controversy to include your viewpoint, which is normal, but AFAIK at the end of the day the US doesn't really have any kind of law that would cover the right of publicity for publicly available information. It's simply not a mass surveillance question.

If a very small number of people keep making large numbers of requests that bog down the team working on fulfilling them, it might make sense to prioritize requests from other people instead.

Alternatively, improve the process of fulfilling FOIA requests so that it cannot be "bogged down" by someone making requests (which is a manual process).

One such improvement would be to publish all this information publicly in the first place.

The whole idea of FOIA requests is broken - it only exists to compel the government to disclose the information that they are legally required to disclose but don't feel like it unless someone takes the time to specifically request it.

So every document, email, and memo should have a redacted version generated at the same time as it is generated? Every time omeone creates a spreadsheet or DB table, they have to review which parts of it are revealable under FOIA? That is... an insane burden.

I believe they already do something like this. In some declassified documents, each sentence or paragraph is labelled with its classification level.

I think this makes it easier for the FOIA processors to redact.

This pertains to word documents.

"One such improvement would be to publish all this information publicly in the first place."

As a tax payer I'd prefer they not do this. The cost of having every document redacted would be enormous.

I'm sure many documents contain PII of citizens and agents so redaction is definitely required.

Why not generate a redacted version at the same time as you compile the official version.

In fact, why not label the report with verious levels of security clearance so information can be selectively revealed to those who have cleareance?

wait... you mean make government more efficient by making everyone fill out everything in duplicate? :)

What makes those other people's requests more deserving to be answered?

Why not hire more people? Same reason regulatory and public defender agencies are kept underfunded and (consequently) understaffed: it's by design.

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