FOIA News: Lawmakers seek to protect feds who file FOIA requests

Leahy Introduces The Federal Employee Access To Information Act To Protect Federal Employees From Retaliation For Filing FOIA Requests

. . . Helping Preserve FOIA as a Tool to Expose Government Wrongdoing

Press Release, U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), along with Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney and Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, introduced the Federal Employee Access to Information Act to ensure that federal employees are able to use the nation’s premier transparency law, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), without reprisal.  

FOIA helps expose government wrongdoing and abuses, and Leahy believes that federal employees must be free to use FOIA in the same way as other citizens.  This legislation would prohibit retaliation against federal employees for filing and pursuing FOIA requests

Read more here.

FOIA News: DHS & DOD seek FOIA tech upgrades

DHS, DISA look to clouds for FOIA management

GCN, Aug. 4, 2020

The Department of Homeland Security's Privacy Office is looking for an enterprisewide cloud-based workflow solution to help its DHS process Freedom of Information Act requests and improve data reliability and consistency.

According to a July 31 solicitation, DHS receives more FOIA requests than any federal agency -- approximately 385,000 FOIA, privacy and other requests -- almost 40% of all requests within the federal government, with the scope of each search ranging from one page to one terabyte of records. While DHS was able to substantially increased the number of requests processed over the last 10 years, however, it has not been able to keep pace with the growth in demand, according to its March 2020 Backlog Reduction Plan: 2020 - 2023

Read more here.

FOIA News: Reporter investigating politicization of FOIA

On July 31, 2020, frequent FOIA requester and Buzzfeed reporter Jason Leopold announced on Twitter that he was investigating the politicization of FOIA and, to that that end, he is asking government employees to contact him with tips.

Fo readers interested in the related issue of “sensitive review,” that is, the practice of giving FOIA requests extra scrutiny, my former colleagues at Cause of Action Institute have been uncovering documentation of that practice since 2013: https://causeofaction.org/sensitive-review/.

FOIA News: FOIA personnel taxed by workload, survey reveals

Stacks on Stacks: Survey Shows Increased FOIA Requests Still a Challenge

By Jim Gil, Ipro, July 31, 2020

Today’s eDiscovery Blues cartoon gives a nod to our colleagues working in government agencies processing FOIA requests. By law, all federal agencies are required to respond to a FOIA request within 20 business days, unless there are “unusual circumstances.”

The number of requests per year has continued to rise over the past decade, with 858,952 requests in FY 2019 alone, according to the DOJ. Along with this rise in requests, comes an increase in data to search through. So not only are more requests coming in, there is a larger data landscape to sift through in order to find relevant documents.

Read more here.

FOIA News: Gov't FOIA jobs available

• DHS/ICE, Paralegal Specialist (GS 9), Florida, closes Aug. 3, 2020

• DHS/ICE, Supervisory Gov’t Info. Specialist (GS 14), DC, closes Aug. 6, 2020

• EPA, Gov’t Info. Specialist (GS 12-13), Virginia, closes Aug. 7, 2020

• Dep’t of the Army, Gov’t Info. Specialist (GG 12), Maryland, closes Aug. 7, 2020

• DHS/FDA, Gov’t Info. Specialist (GS 13), Maryland, closes Aug. 11, 2020 (or first 100 applications)

• Nat’l Transp. Safety Bd., Gov’t Info. Specialist (GS 13), DC, closes Aug. 13, 2020

FOIA News: Court considers in camera review of Facebook-FTC settlement docs

Docs In $5B Facebook-FTC Deal May Need Judge's Scrutiny

Law360, July 30, 2020

A federal judge suggested Thursday that she will need to get a closer look at documents pertaining to a $5 billion settlement between Facebook Inc. and the Federal Trade Commission before deciding whether to turn them over to Block and Leviton LLP for use in an investor suit. The Boston form sued the FTC under the Freedom of Information Act in December after media reports suggested Facebook had paid billions more than it need to in order to settle the agency’s suit over its privacy practices and protect founder Mark Zuckerberg,

Read more here (accessible with free trial subscription).

FOIA News: DOJ will release Andrew McCabe's text messages

DOJ agrees to release FBI texts from Andrew McCabe

By Jerry Dunleavy, Wash Exam’r, July 29, 2020

The Justice Department has agreed to release at least some of fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s text messages following a yearslong Freedom of Information Act lawsuit pursued by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group.

The Justice Department told a D.C. federal court last week that it had found dozens of potentially relevant texts from the FBI official who played a key role in the Trump-Russia investigation and the Clinton emails investigation. McCabe was fired after the DOJ inspector general concluded that he misled investigators about his role in leaks to the media, although he denies any wrongdoing. DOJ lawyers told the court and Judicial Watch that they would need until the end of August to review the records before agreeing to a production schedule.

Read more here.

FOIA News: OIG issues report on DHS FOIA program

OIG: DHS FOIA Response Times are ‘Better Than Average’ but Delays Over Complex Requests Must Improve

By Kylie Bielby, Homeland Security Today, July 29, 2020

In response to a request from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has conducted a review of DHS’ handling of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and congressional requests directed to the DHS Office of the Secretary — specifically, the DHS Secretary and Deputy Secretary. 

* * *

Regarding FOIA requests, OIG found that while DHS generally met deadlines for responding to simple FOIA requests, it did not do so for most complex requests. A significant increase in requests received, coupled with resource constraints, limited DHS’ ability to meet production timelines under FOIA, creating a litigation risk for the Department. However, despite the limitations, DHS FOIA response times are better than the averages across the federal government. 

Read more here.

FOIA News: Sierra Club files opening brief in Exemption 5 SCOTUS case

Justices Must Require Release of Species Records, Group Says

Bloomberg Law, July 28, 2020

• Case involves FOIA request for endangered species documents

• Sierra Club says records not protected under exemption

The federal government can’t keep Endangered Species Act documents under wraps simply by labeling them drafts, the Sierra Club told the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a brief filed Monday, the environmental group urged the justices to uphold a lower court’s decision ordering the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service to hand over the records under the Freedom of Information Act.

Read more here (subscription required).

FOIA News: Federal reserve updates FOIA regs

The Federal Reserve Board on Friday finalized a rule that implements technical, clarifying updates to its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) procedures and changes to its rules for the disclosure of confidential supervisory information (CSI), which is supervisory information belonging to the Board that may include proprietary financial institution-specific information. The final rule is generally similar to the proposal from June 2019, with a few changes in response to public comments.

Read more from the agency’s press release here.