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Comment by jack-r-abbit | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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