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.

Court opinions issued Aug. 3, 2020

Butt v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- determining that EOUSA performed adequate search for records concerning plaintiff except for excluding U.S. Attorney from search, and that agency properly withheld records pursuant to Exemption 5’s attorney work-product privilege.

Liounis v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- on remand from the D.C. Circuit, ruling that government performed reasonable search for grand jury records pertaining to plaintiff’s criminal case.

Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available 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/.

Court opinion issued July 31, 2020

Day v. U.S. Dep’t of the Treasury (D.D.C.) -- finding that plaintiff failed to exhaust his administrative remedies because he was unable to demonstrate that his request was received by IRS, which averred that it never received it.

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

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.

Court opinion issued July 30, 2020

Eakin v. DOD (W.D. Tex.) -- granting plaintiff’s motion to amend his complaint to include FOIA request for additional Individual Deceased Personnel Files of World War II service members even though scheduling order’s amendment deadline in pending lawsuit lapsed three years ago.

Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available 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).

Court opinion issued July 29, 2020

Gonzalez v. USCIS (S.D.N.Y.) — finding that government performed adequate search for records concerning plaintiff and that it properly withheld records pursuant to Exemptions 7(E) and 7(F).

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

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.