http://tinyletter.com/cjciaramella/letters/foia-rundown-omb-to-release-massive-list-of-gov-data-dog-s-name-is-redacted

FOIA Rundown: OMB to release massive list of gov data, 'Dog's name is [redacted]'

Hi all,
Welcome to this week's FOIA Rundown. We've been on sort of a bi-monthly schedule lately, but I hope to get this ship righted and seaworthy again. As always, please send tips and corrections to cj.ciaramella@gmail.com.

Big win for Sunlight Foundation (and the rest of us): The Office of Management and Budget has agreed to release agencies' Enterprise Data Inventories, possibly the largest index of government data in the world, thanks to pressure from the Sunlight Foundation. According to the Sunlight Foundation, the EDIs are due on Feb. 28, and OMB will release them as soon as three days after they are submitted by the agencies.

“We view this release as a significant victory for the open government and open data movement,” the Sunlight Foundation said in a blog post. “Rather than wondering what data the government has, we are all now in the position of policing how completely agencies are indexing their data, deciding what to publish and determining why some data cannot be public.”

SO MANY LAWSUITS

• Obama admin asserts executive privilege over documents regarding election-year plan to divert Fannie and Freddie profits to the Treasury Department.
• This decision could be big: Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals rules Chicago Sun-Times not protected by 1st Amendment in suit brought by Chicago police officers for publishing improperly obtained personal information.
• California Supreme Court rules in favor of the Center for Investigative Reporting, forcing state to reveal full details of abuse of disabled patients at state-run facilities. "The ruling means that the public will get a detailed look at abuses, ranging from neglect to sexual assault, that have occurred inside these facilities. For three and a half years, The Center for Investigative Reporting has been working to get the state to turn over complete records on the serious violations issued to developmental centers."
• EFF files FOIA suit over US Marshal's spy planes.
• In FOIA suit brought by Ryan Shapiro, federal judge rules FBI doesn't have to disclose details of Houston plot to assassinate Occupy leaders.
• Judge rules against NYT editor in FOIA suit against CIA for records on his late father, a Cuban diplomat who later defected to the U.S. The court agreed with the CIA that its Glomar response for decades-old records was appropriate, and their release could harm national security interests and the CIA's human intel sourcing. I wrote about Florez's case last year.
• NYU Technology Law & Policy Clinic files a legal brief on behalf of Freedom of the Press Foundation in Twitter lawsuit against the government re: transparency reports on national security letters.
• EPIC wins $29K in attorneys' fees in FOIA suit against FBI for Stingray docs.

I've seen some strict privacy redactions before, but this ... 



Courtesy of Elizabeth Dinan.

FOIA Reform: The New York Times issued an editorial in favor of FOIA reform legislation currently sitting in the House and Senate. Related: LA Times editorial in favor of FOIA bill. CBO estimates FOIA reform bill would cost $20 million over five years, which for the federal government is like the courtesy change they keep by the register at 7/11.

RIP David Carr: The late, great David Carr on FOIA reform back in '07, showing the rest of us how a pro does it:

We live in a nakedly transparent age. Celebrities live out loud, companies routinely have their business spilled all over the Web and anybody can find out an awful lot about you or me with a click of the mouse.

Not so in Washington, however, where the mechanism for releasing information has all but ground to a halt.

Four decades ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson reluctantly signed the Freedom of Information Act (F.O.I.A.) into law, requiring federal agencies to respond to any request for documents within 20 days and provide them within a reasonable time afterward. The law held that information gathered on our behalf — paid for and owned by you and me, at least theoretically — should be ours for the asking.

But it hasn’t worked out that way. While the mandate for disclosure is still there, it is overwhelmed by a Rube Goldberg apparatus that clanks and wheezes, but rarely turns up the data.

Freedom of Information requests have been caught in the gears for decades, and journalists working on timely stories about lead in school lunch boxes, FEMA’s response to Hurricane Katrina and delays in the delivery of veterans’ benefits have all been stymied by agencies that flout the law through recalcitrance or ineptitude.

US drops to 49th in global press freedom index: Thanks, Obama.

Thanks Obama, Cont.: New York Times reporter James Risen goes on a tweet rampage against Attorney General Eric Holder, following Holder's speech at the National Press Club this week. Via Politico:

“Eric Holder has sent a message to dictators around the world that it is okay to crack down on the press and jail journalists,” Risen tweeted on Tuesday. “Eric Holder leaves behind a wrecked First Amendment.”

“Eric Holder managed to destroy any semblance of a reporter’s privilege in the United States,” he continued. “This is Eric Holder's true legacy on press freedom: ‘There is no First Amendment ‘reporter's privilege.’ From DOJ brief in my case.”

"I plan to spend the rest of my life fighting to undo damage done to press freedom in the United States by Barack Obama and Eric Holder," Risen continued in another tweet. "My son is a reporter. I don't want him to have to live in a country where there is less press freedom than when I started as a journalist."

Brian Fallon, Holder's top spokesperson, replied to Risen's tweet late Tuesday about there being no "reporter's privilege" in the First Amendment. "That's what the law says, Jim. Urge Congress to pass the media shield bill and it will be different," Fallon said.

Department of Homeland Security launches new site to track status of FOIA requests.

Local police departments must notify the FBI of public records requests for info on Stingray cell-phone tracking tech. Via Ars Technica: "The newest revelation about the FBI comes from a June 2012 letter written by the law enforcement agency to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. It was first acquired and published by the Minneapolis Star Tribune in December 2014—similar language likely exists between the FBI and other local authorities that use stingrays."

Related: Law enforcement agencies divided over releasing StingRay docs, Muckrock reports. Boston PD is wholesale rejecting Muckrock's request for such docs.

'FBI can't find the drone privacy reports it's legally required to have.' Shawn Musgrave reports over at Vice's Motherboard: "Six months ago, the Federal Bureau of Investigation refused to release its plans to tackle privacy risks posed by drone surveillance. Now the agency claims it can’t track them down at all. So does the one Justice Department office responsible for making sure such reports get filed in the first place."

Congress looking into White House role in FCC net neutrality regulations: Josh Peterson, writing at the Free Beacon, reports on the House Oversight's investigation of the White House's role in new net neutrality rules. The investigation was sparked by heavily redacted emails obtained by Vice's Jason Leopold. Here's more from Leopold on White House interference with his FOIA request:

An FCC spokesman told VICE News the Justice Department's FOIA guidance, which "the Commission strictly adheres to," "makes clear that the Commission should not unilaterally decide to release records that involve other agencies. Consistent with the guidance, the FCC always consults with other agencies on the sensitivity of a document before determining whether to disclose it."

Nate Jones, a FOIA expert at George Washington University's National Security Archive, said the FCC spokesperson's interpretation of the federal FOIA guidelines is a "bit off." 

"The White House is not an 'agency,'" Jones said. "Does the FCC run emails from congresspeople or citizens outside of government by them before processing them for FOIA? I don't think so. I think in this case they gave the White House a political privilege."

A MuckRock primer on filing FOIA requests for presidential records.

CIA only needs six years to release CREST data, not 28 years! 

DOCUMENTS OF NOTE

• Greenpeace uses FOIA to expose the corporate ties to a leading climate change skeptic.
• The EFF's Dave Maass, using public records, reports that hundreds of South Carolina inmates have been sent to solitary confinement for using Facebook.
• Deep dive by The Guardian's Spencer Ackerman on how a cop took his coercive interrogation techniques from the south side of Chicago to GITMO. Note that the Chicago PD, as is its wont, is stonewalling Ackerman on records related to the police officer.
• ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's declassified Iraqi prison file, courtesy of Business Insider.

STATE NEWS

• Ohio lawsuit over lethal injection secrecy law dismissed.
• Albuquerque PD sued for releasing password-protected CDs with records on fatal police shooting. The New Yorker recently wrote a long article on the city's problematic police department.
• South Carolina House passes bill creating Office of FOIA Review.
• Following Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber's shocking resignation over an influence peddling scandal, Alex Howard reports that the new governor is taking steps to improve transparency: "After governor Kate Brown was sworn in as the 38th governor of the state of Oregon, replacing fellow Democrat John Kitzhaber, her administration chose to try to restore public trust by not only posting public records requests online but including the authors, status and a downloadable link to the records themselves, once fulfilled. The records only go back to January 15th, 2015, with a note that requests made prior to that date are “still being processed."
• New Jersey improperly denied request for docs on NYPD spying on Muslim communities, appeals court rules.

EVENTS

• Get pumped for Sunshine Week and check out the full list of upcoming events.
• Carl Malamud proposes May 1st as a national day of PACER protest.

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