Q&A: Indiana here I come?

Q.  Can I request all documents and emails containing my name and address from Indiana Child Protective Services that they have from this year ?

A.  I am not sufficiently familiar with Indiana's Access to Public Records Act (APRA) to predict with certainty how the agency would likely process your request.  I suspect, however, that you would not be able to obtain records of any complaints or pending investigations about you, for example, nor records of third parties in which you are merely mentioned.  For a more informed answer, you might wish to contact a lawyer licensed to practice in the State of Indiana or  Indiana's Public Access Counselor, which provides free assistance to the public concerning records access laws.  

FOIA News: Yale Law Journal publishes new article; Margaret Kwoka on "First-Person FOIA"

Margaret B. Kwoka, First-Person FOIA, 127 Yale L.J. 2204 (2018)

ABSTRACT:

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) embodies a radical notion. By allowing any person to request any records for any reason, it was meant to open up government for all to see. Investigative journalists, watchdog groups, and concerned citizens would all jump at the chance to hold officials accountable and unearth secretive government actions. The numbers seem to support a FOIA success story: after all, the government now consistently receives over 700,000 FOIA requests a year.

As it turns out, however, it is not journalists and nonprofits who are making hundreds of thousands of requests. In my previous article, FOIA, Inc., I documented how commercial requesters have dominated the FOIA landscape at some agencies, particularly large regulatory agencies. In doing so, they have transformed FOIA into a sort of giveaway to businesses, to the potential detriment of those whose requests promote government oversight.

Read more (as well as the article) here.

FOIA News: Immigrant advocates file FOIA lawsuit for records concerning family separation policy

Advocates File FOIA Suit Over Family Separation Information

Nicole Narea, Law360, June 27, 2018

Law360 (June 27, 2018, 5:56 PM EDT) -- Immigrant advocates filed a suit against the Trump administration Wednesday in Washington, D.C., federal court seeking to compel the government to respond to its Freedom of Information Act requests for information regarding family separation policies, guidance and data.

The suit was filed in response to immigration agencies’ failure to respond to FOIA requests made April 3 by the American Immigration Council, National Immigrant Justice Center, Women’s Refugee Commission, Kids in Need of Defense, and the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project.

They had petitioned for documents describing how noncitizen families are processed at the border, training materials on separating families, and complaints related to family separation, as well as data on the number of families that have been separated and the number of adult family members referred for prosecution.

Read more here.

FOIA News: Registration opens for 7/19 Chief FOIA Officers Council Meeting

Registration is Open: Chief FOIA Officers Council Meeting and CDC FOIA Requester Webinar

Nat'l Archives & Records Admin., The FOIA Ombudsman, June 27, 2018

Registration is now open for the upcoming Chief FOIA Officers Council meeting on July 19, 2018 beginning at 10 am (EST).  If you cannot join us in person, you can watch the livestream via the National Archives’ YouTube Channel. The Chief FOIA Officers Council is co-chaired by OGIS and the Department of Justice Office of Information Policy and is intended to develop recommendations to increase agency compliance and efficiency and to share agency best practices and innovative approaches. Be sure to keep an eye on the Chief FOIA Officers Council section of our webpage for additional details about the meeting and our agenda.

Read more here.

FOIA News: SEC issues final FOIA regulations

The Securities Exchange Commission issued a final rule appearing in today's Federal Register that amends the agency's FOIA regulations.  The amendments reflect changes required by the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016  and clarify, update, and streamline the SEC's regulations.

FOIA News: Open the Government Publishes Findings on FOIA in Intelligence Agencies

Reports Show Spike in Lawsuits Against Intelligence Agencies Due to High Rate of FOIA Denials and Slow Processing Time

Open the Government, June 27, 2018

Open the Government Executive Director Lisa Rosenberg urged America’s military and intelligence agencies to be more forthcoming and less secretive to avoid costly lawsuits that waste taxpayer’s money and infringe on the public’s right to know. Freedom of Information Act lawsuits have increased sharply under this administration, and an OTG survey of recent FOIA reports on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Army, Navy, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), show that these agencies spend a disproportionate amount of taxpayer’s dollars on FOIA-related litigation costs. The CIA is far and away the biggest abuser when it comes to government spending in defense of secrecy.  

“Excessive and reflexive secrecy, that serves no legitimate purpose, is a costly habit that our intelligence community needs to kick before they waste more taxpayer’s money defending the indefensible in costly FOIA lawsuits,” said Open the Government Executive Director Lisa Rosenberg. “Congress needs to step-up and fulfill its oversight role to make sure agencies are accountable to the public and fully complying with their legal transparency requirements.”

Read more here.

Court opinion issued June 25, 2018

Higgs v. U.S. Park Police (S.D. Ind.) -- in case involving records of death-row-plaintiff's triple homicide, concluding that: (1)  government properly invoked Exemption 7(D) to withhold source information from FBI interviews, but that Exemption 7(C) withholdings were invalid because government failed to show third parties were still living after passage of 22 years; and (2) government improperly relied on Exemption 7(E) to withhold National Crime Information Center reports and ballistics reports.

Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 available here.    

FOIA News: FBI to file Open America stays in all FOIA Lawsuits?

The FBI has filed at least one Open America stay today and is prepping another.

Congress really needs to hold a hearing on this.

2/2

— Jason Leopold (@JasonLeopold) June 26, 2018

FOIA News: Cause of Action Institute on GAO Study, FOIA Lawsuit

CoA Institute Files FOIA Lawsuit for Internet Browsing Records of OMB’s Mulvaney and USDA’s Perdue

Cause of Action Institute (“CoA Institute”) sued the White House Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) and the Department of Agriculture (“USDA”) today for failure to disclose records reflecting top officials’ Internet browsing history.  The records at issue—which were the subject of two July 2017 Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) requests (here and here)—include the web browsing histories of OMB Director John Mulvaney and USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue, as well as their communications directors, on any government-issued electronic devices.

Read more here.

GAO Report Highlights Agencies Failing to Implement the FOIA

A report released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) provides alarming details about the dearth of agency efforts to fully implement the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”).  GAO previewed a draft of its report in March 2018 when its Director of Information Technology Management Issues, David Powner, testified at a hearing on FOIA compliance before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary.  At the time, GAO published a concurrent report on how federal courts regularly fail to refer cases to the Office of Special Counsel (“OSC”) to determine whether disciplinary action is warranted in instances where officials have acted arbitrarily or capriciously in withholding records.  (Cause of Action Institute’s (“CoA Institute”) commentary on that issue can be found here.)  Yesterday’s report finalizes GAO’s findings and incorporates feedback from the eighteen agencies in the sample subject to the audit.

Read more here.

FOIA News: GAO releases FOIA study

Today the General Accountability Office released a study concerning agency compliance with the Freedom of Information Act.  The study was limited to an examination of eighteen agencies of varying sizes and federal agencies’ compliance with six FOIA requirements, backlogs, use of exemptions, and FOIA requests related to the 2008 financial crisis.