Pentagon Responds to FOIA with Ultimatum | Hacker News Reader

Pentagon Responds to FOIA with Ultimatum

washingtonpost.com

157 pointscorndoge30 comments

I met a guy at a party who started a news outfit[1] trying to simplify FOIA. He had stories like this galore- such as meeting gov't employees in person at conferences, saying his name, and seeing their eyes grow big. Apparently frequent requesters become notorious.

[1] https://www.muckrock.com

Yes, MuckRock is a great service, not least of which for the window it provides all non-customers into how our government FOIA works. By default, if you file a request, that request -- including all of its updates and resulting response -- is publicly viewable:

https://www.muckrock.com/foi/list/

Before FOIAing an agency, I'll sometimes check MuckRock to get a better understanding of what to expect, including who to direct my letter to and an estimate of how long I might wait...or best of all, examples of precedent to use to bolster my legal standing ("On June 3, 2014, you fulfilled a similar request for James Smith via Muckrock").

Hell, you don't even have to be in the FOIA-writing mindset...just reading that list will give you a veritable shitton of ideas of the kinds of things about government that has piqued the interest of other reporters, private investigators, politicians, and hedge fund analysts. Analyzing the metadata alone would make for a very useful service.

Huge shoutout for Muckrock. I use them extensively, and have worked with Michael (the founder) a bit. Can't say enough nice things.

Please please please check out their site if you're doing FOIAs. There is a cost, but its minimal, and worth it. They'll help you manage the FOIA process, and whatever records are returned become public on Muckrock's site.

Example: https://www.muckrock.com/foi/list/

Indeed, some state FOIA laws even have provisions for dealing with "frequent requestors." (And to be fair, not all frequent requestors are acting in good faith. There was a push recently to bury the NSA in FOIA requests as a protest against surveillance. Not a great idea.)

Muckrock is awesome though.

Yes, we haven't run into that problem so far, but I know Illinois has pretty strict rules on this.

That is solved by a weighted queue based on an individual and rate limiting based on budget.

E.g. The Pentagon will answer 100,000 requests per month, each individual will have a spot in the queue, when a request is received the next request from that individual is at (N requests * -1) in weight.

So:

X, Request 1, 0

N, Request 2, 0

Z, Request 3, 0

A, Request 5, 0

Q, Request 7, 0

X, Request 4, -1 [will be weighted 0 for next month]

X, Request 6, -2 [will be weighted -1 for next month]

A similar service: https://www.foiamachine.org/

I think it really shows how powerful the bureaucracy really is that they'd write down an essentially illegal ultimatum, confident that the consequences would be essentially nonexistent.

  “As a matter of policy, we don’t comment on legal matters,” says Defense Department spokeswoman Lt. Col. Valerie Henderson.

This is very confusing. What was the question?

As an aside: Would "sub judice" policy still make sense if we treated all speech the same? (under & not under oath)

What is FOIA?

Freedom of Information Act. It's a US Federal law that allows private citizens to request that the government provide any records that it has in its files. The government likes to keep copies of EVERYTHING, so you can often turn up quite a bit of documentation. The law has very strict requirements on what can be withheld or redacted -- for example, the government can't withhold data just because it's embarrassing to them.

Except in the cases where it actually is embarrassing, in which case it is redacted "for national security".

Why doesn't Mr. Leopold realize that our superiors in public service know what's best for the country and act accordingly, and shouldn't have to waste their time responding to plebians? /s

Edit: because it seems to have been lost on many, the "/s" above indicates that the preceding is sarcasm.

I absolutely detest the sarcastic, cynical replies that always appear in the comments of stories like this. It feels good to write them, but reading them just fills me with a deep sense of defeat and sadness and they contribute little or nothing.

Ah, but consider that the fundamental cause of such comments indicates the opposite of defeat!

Where there is cynicism, there is knowledge of reality instead of illusion. Where there is sarcasm, there is an implication that a better reality is possible, and perhaps deserved.

A sarcastic cynical reply to a problem of government is an indicator that someone has identified a problem, and can envision a better world if it were fixed. They are waiting for a call to action, a plan, or an effective way of participating.

Imagine a world in which every action of the government were met with widespread cynicism and sarcasm! It'd be akin to the ultra-pessimistic attitudes of Russians before and during the fall of the USSR-- a public unwilling to give their government anything other than derision is in the active process of reformation.

What if I wrote a couple of honest, impassioned paragraphs as to why I disagree with the reporter's treatment?

Would I -- or anybody else here -- have accomplished more? Aren't we all just bellyaching on the Internet?

I think you would have. A sarcastic response is free of any real content, and assumes the reader agrees with your point of view (otherwise, why would they find it funny).

Writing some honest, passionate paragraphs would set out your view in a way that would allow others to understand what you believe, and why.

You're being sarcastic, correct? Or trolling?

Sarcastic, which is why I included /s (a de facto emoticon of such) at the end.

Although sarcasm isn't popular with some HN users, I felt that I could either post a longer, heartfelt diatribe about how this is wrong.... or I could convey the same opinion in less space and perhaps with a bit of humor by using sarcasm.

Yes, that's what /s means.

MrZongle2 is being sarcastic. Sadly, I have met the public official that would utter those words and, in fact, had uttered comments asking voters to shut up and just do what said official tells them to do.

[edit: the official was an unelected bureaucrat]

My sarcasm readings are off the chart for this one.

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