FOIA Advisor

FOIA News: Muckrock addresses "still interested" letters

FOIA News (2015-2023)Allan BlutsteinComment

Some FOIA requesters are seeing an uptick in “Still Interested” letters - here’s how to deal with them

September is “Still Interested” season. Be prepared so your request keeps its place in the queue.

By Michael Morisy, Muckrock, Aug. 31, 2017

Few things can be more galling for a FOIA requester than to patiently wait on a request for years, only to be told by an agency that if they don’t respond quickly and let the agency know they’re still interested, their request will be closed out.

In the worst cases, we’ve seen requesters told they only have five days to respond - and the postmark on the envelope is after the deadline, meaning only the most psychically gifted requesters even have a chance to keep their request open.

And while we’ve seen an increase in these types of letters recently, the good news is that we haven’t seen the most aggressive worst practices that we saw a few years ago.

Read more here.