FOIA News: FOIA’s worldwide influence

How FOIA Gave Rise to Government Transparency Laws Around the World

Flawed as it may be, the U.S. Freedom of Information Act became a model in transparency for other countries to follow.

By Matthew Petti, Reason, Jan. 2025

It's well-known that the government heavily censors documents before declassifying them—something humorously captured by The Onion in 2005 with the headline, "CIA Realizes It's Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years." But from a glass-half-full perspective, it's incredible that the U.S. government shares information with the public at all. The original Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) of 1966—the law under which many of those redacted documents are obtained—was the "product of years of slow campaigning by a network of journalists, scientists, and politicians seeking to make the government more transparent," the historian Sam Lebovic writes in State of Silence: The Espionage Act and the Rise of America's Secrecy Regime. FOIA was later strengthened in the wake of the Watergate scandals in the 1970s.

Read more here.

FOIA News: How to fix FOIA from the ivory tower

Needed: A Transparency Guardian

Our FOIA system was once the world’s gold standard. Here’s how it became sclerotic—and what we need to do to fix it.

By Margaret Kwoka, Democracy, Winter 2025

* * *

When the Freedom of Information Act was enacted in 1966, it was revolutionary. Its basic premise—that ordinary citizens have a right to know what the government knows—radically reimagined the relationship between the public and the federal government. . . . But more than a half-century after Congress passed this landmark legislation, it is clear that FOIA largely has not—and cannot—live up to its mission.

The core problem is this: There is no arm of the U.S. government that champions transparency. No government agency embodies a transparency mission; no court possesses transparency expertise. FOIA provides a core right for the public to access government records, but it lacks a locus for implementation and enforcement. . . .

Read more here.

Monthly Roundup: Dec. 2024

Below is a summary of the notable FOIA court decisions and news from last month, as well as a look ahead to FOIA events in January.

Court decisions

We identified and posted 14 decisions in December. Of note was Am. First Legal Found. v. DHS (D.D.C.), a split Exemption 7(C) and 7(E) decision involving data about enforcement actions taken against certain non-citizens. With respect to Exemption 7(C), the court ruled that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement properly withheld names of non-citizens, docket numbers, and full dates of birth, but that it had not justified the blanket withholding of birth months and years, residential addresses by city, state, and country, or gag, cartel, terrorist group affiliations, and monikers. In reaching its decision, the court rejected plaintiff’s threshold argument that non-citizens have no privacy rights under FOIA, noting that plaintiff’s position was unsupported by the statute’s text and case law and would lead to absurd results. As for Exemption 7(E), the court determined that ICE properly withheld precise addresses where at-large, non-citizens could be located, but it failed to justify withholding city, state, and country data. Further, the court found that ICE properly withheld operational details about its past and future attempts to locate non-citizens, as well as “‘apprehension locations of non-citizens attempting to enter the U.S. illegally”; however, ICE fell short with respect to its Exemption 7(E) withholdings of the names of gang, cartel, and terrorist group affiliations, and monikers.

Top news

On December 9, 2024, the Office of Government Information Services issued recommendations on intelligence community records.

The FOIA Advisory Committee for the 2024-2026 term met for the third time on Dec. 5, 2024,

January calendar

Jan. 13, 2025: Deadline for agencies receiving more than 50 requests in FY 2023 to submit their 2025 Chief FOIA Officer Reports to DOJ.

Jan. 14, 2025: D.C. Circuit oral argument in McWatters v. ATF, 24-5083.

Jan, 15, 2025: DOJ Exemption 4 and Exemption 5 Training

Jan. 22, 2025: DOJ Privacy Considerations Training

Jan. 29, 2025: DOJ Administrative Appeals, FOIA Compliance, and Customer Service Training

Jan. 31, 2025: Agency deadline to post FY 2025, Quarter 1 data.

Court opinion issued Dec. 31, 2024

TC Co. v. U.S. Forest Serv. (D.N.M.) -- concluding that: (1) plaintiff’s FOIA requests filed after the instant litigation commenced were not properly before the court; (2) agency properly relied on Exemptions 6 and 7(C) to withhold personally identifiable information about employees and third parties; (3) agency conducted adequate search for various records concerning a 2022 wildfire.

Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2024 are available here. Earlier opinions are available here.

Court opinion issued Dec. 30, 2024

Battle Born Investments v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- holding that DOJ properly invoked Exemption 7(C) to redact the name of an individual who stole more than 70,000 Bitcoins from Silk Road, an online black market; reasoning that third party had “strong,” categorical privacy interest in keeping secret his or her involvement in law enforcement action, whereas plaintiff’s “serious corruption claims against the government” amounted to “little more than conclusory allegations and speculation.”

Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2024 are available here. Earlier opinions are available here.

Court opinion issued Dec. 26, 2024

Magassa v. FBI (D.C. Cir.) (unpublished) -- affirming district court’s decision that FBI performed adequate search for records concerning plaintiff; FBI properly withheld records pursuant to Exemptions 3 (National Security Act), 7(C), and 7(E); and FBI properly refused to confirm or deny existence of plaintiff’s name on agency terrorism watchlists pursuant to Exemption 7(E).

Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2024 are available here. Earlier opinions are available here.

Court opinion issued Dec. 23, 2024

S. Envtl. Law Ctr. v. Tenn. Valley Auth. (E.D. Tenn.) -- denying government’s motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction because plaintiff filed suit before agency issued its untimely determination and issues about the agency’s search and withholdings remained unresolved.

Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2024 are available here. Earlier opinions are available here.

Court opinion issued Dec. 20, 2024

Sabra v. U.S. Customs & Border Prot. (D.C. Cir.) (unpublished) -- affirming district court’s decision that agency’s production of records mooted plaintiff’s expedited processing claim and that agency’s search for records was adequate.

Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2024 are available here. Earlier opinions are available here.

Court opinions issued Dec. 18, 2024

Dec. 18, 2024

Leopold v. DOJ (D.D.C.) -- in dispute over the Attorney General’s communications referencing voting irregularities in the 2020 election, deciding that DOJ properly withheld all but one document pursuant to Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege and/or Exemption 7(E); rejecting DOJ’s argument that Exemption 5 applied to so-called “talking points,” because the document read “very much like a fixed script” or a “final set of instructions promulgated by office leadership for staff to follow,” as opposed tp “mere suggestions”; further noting that DOJ failed to show how “previously cleared-for-release responses” would cause harm if released.

Haleem v. DOD (D.D.C.) -- in case concerning agency’s revocation of plaintiff’s security clearance, ruling that: (1) plaintiff’s duplicative request sought only records that the agency had previously withheld, and therefore the court would abstain from reviewing the adequacy of the agency’s original search; (2) plaintiff exhausted his administrative remedies by appealing from the agency’s denial of plaintiff’s duplicate request; (3) in camera review confirmed that agency properly relied on Exemption 7(E) to withhold responsive records detailing procedures and techniques used for law-enforcement purposes; moreover, because the agency demonstrated that disclosure created risk of circumvention of law, no further foreseeable harm analysis was necessary.

Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2024 are available here. Earlier opinions are available here.

Jobs, jobs, jobs: Weekly report 12/30/24

Federal positions closing in the next 10 days

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Commerce/Census, GS 13, Suitland, MD, closes 12/30/24 (non-public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Veterans Affairs/VHA, GS 9, Charleston, SC, closes 12/30/24 (non-public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of the Air Force, GS 13, Quantico, VA, closes 12/30/24 (non-public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Homeland Sec./USCIS, GS 13, multiple locations, closes 12/30/24 (non-public).

Sup. Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of State, GS 14, Wash., DC, closes 1/2/25 (non-public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of the Treasury/IRS, GS 13, multiple locations, closes 1/3/25 (non-public).

Federal positions closing on or after Jan. 9, 2025

Att’y-Advisor, Dep’t of Transportation/PHMSA, GS 14, Wash., DC, closes 1/9/25 (public)

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of the Treasury/IRS, GS 13, nationwide, closes 1/9/25 (non-public).

Gov’t Info. Specialist, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., GS 12, Wash., DC, closes 1/10/25 (non-public).

Att’y Advisor, Dep’t of Justice/Pardon, GS 13-15, Wash., DC, open until filled (public).