3 ms·

What is the penalty for not responding in time?

bpchaps 11y ago
For Illinois, two big things - 1. They can't reject the FOIA with "unduly burdensome" anymore, which is an incredibly common and frustrating response. 2. They can be sued for not complying, which then becomes a slow drawn out process. The upside is that it's something like 8k if the judge thinks the request was rejected/ignored intentionally or without proper followup. Example - I did a FOIA that was rejected absurdly unfairly. Going through the attorney general took about 6 months to hear a response back, which Chicago's lawyer then used essentially a mistype to throw that request out. 8 months in total there. Fast forward 6 months later and we have a court date with a lot of small things in between then and now.
- ChrisDutrow 11y ago
  Why do these get rejected? Is it just people being lazy? Or people not understanding how to handle the request? Seems like a lot of work for them to go to court?
  - bpchaps 11y ago
    A few things - 1. Definitely a lot of laziness from the FOIA officers. Some are really great, but others not so much. 2. There's no standardization in how it's handled within the city. Departments in the same buildings have very different idea of what should be rejected, their helpfulness, looseness of FOIA interpretation, etc. 3. They're truly not technical in the slightest. At one point I asked for a database dump, excluding sensitive columns and tables. The response was "Wikipedia defines a Data as:", so I had some fun explaining that one. 4. Fighting the process takes a very long time, so a rejection is an easy way to get someone to go away. 5. Not a reason, but still annoying.. They wait the maximum days to respond to your requests. Of the 50 or so I've submitted, I'd say 45 of them have been last minute. 25 times out of the 50, sure... but most? It's a lot of work if it gets to that point, yep, but I've only ever needed my lawyer to file a suit. The average FOIA might take me 5 minutes to write, so it's not really that much time - especially considering what you get for it. Here's an example one with some pretty neat data from it: https://github.com/red-bin/chitickets https://github.com/red-bin/chitickets
    - ChrisDutrow 11y ago
      That's fascinating. It sounds like mostly the requests are rejected because of lack of time / lack of skills / laziness then?
      - bpchaps 11y ago
        Yep. (This post got a lot longer than I was hoping. Hope you find it interesting!) That ticket data is actually managed by IBM, so that even adds an annoying translation dynamic. This current suit is because the city thinks it's 'unduly burdensome' to resolve city-owned phone numbers to names that were dialed by Chicago's mayor. Initially I could have understood that, but it became pretty clear pretty soon that they really didn't want me to have those records with these rejections: Some more detail on the rejections I've been through this past year and 4 months: -Original request asked for the mayor's records. Rejected for "no such records". Heh. -Second was for the FOIA officer's phone records. Again, "No such records". (This was just a test to see if the mayor's phone was the only one without any records..... and it was kinda funny ;)) -Sent a request to Chicago's IT dept for their VOIP logs, which got me a file with the first 6 digits of all of non-government phones that were dialed. Government phones were completely redacted for "privacy" reasons. So, so many things wrong there.. especially since FOIA specifically disallows that sort of redaction. -Sent a "Request For Review" to the attorney general's office, who took 6 months to agree with me and told the FOIA officer to give me the records. Chicago's lawyers then threw the VOIP request out, since they don't have VOIP. The assistant attorney general on the case and my lawyer both said (paraphrased) "They're right, but that's a total dick move and they know it." -Submitted a cleaned up request, without "VOIP". They sent the same file from before. Same creation time and everything. -Now we're waiting through the long court process... About the attorney general's RFR process, though.. You can submit FOIA requests anonymously, but you can't submit RFRs anonymously! Their reasoning was that I need to have a valid signature with my named spelled out in plain text, despite ESIGN allowing pseudonyms. So - don't like that anonymous person? Just don't respond to their request and they'll either have to sue using their name or submit an RFR using their name. I fought that one for about a month and eventually submitted a FOIA request to the AG's office asking for the email chain that led to that decision. That got rejected with something like "deliberation discussions cannot be released."
AckSyn 11y ago
https://firstamendmentcoalition.org/2009/06/non-response-to-foia-request/ https://firstamendmentcoalition.org/2009/06/non-response-to-...

For Illinois, two big things - 1. They can't reject the FOIA with "unduly burdensome" anymore, which is an incredibly common and frustrating response. 2. They can be sued for not complying, which then becomes a slow drawn out process. The upside is that it's something like 8k if the judge thinks the request was rejected/ignored intentionally or without proper followup. Example - I did a FOIA that was rejected absurdly unfairly. Going through the attorney general took about 6 months to hear a response back, which Chicago's lawyer then used essentially a mistype to throw that request out. 8 months in total there. Fast forward 6 months later and we have a court date with a lot of small things in between then and now.

ChrisDutrow 11y ago
Why do these get rejected? Is it just people being lazy? Or people not understanding how to handle the request? Seems like a lot of work for them to go to court?
- bpchaps 11y ago
  A few things - 1. Definitely a lot of laziness from the FOIA officers. Some are really great, but others not so much. 2. There's no standardization in how it's handled within the city. Departments in the same buildings have very different idea of what should be rejected, their helpfulness, looseness of FOIA interpretation, etc. 3. They're truly not technical in the slightest. At one point I asked for a database dump, excluding sensitive columns and tables. The response was "Wikipedia defines a Data as:", so I had some fun explaining that one. 4. Fighting the process takes a very long time, so a rejection is an easy way to get someone to go away. 5. Not a reason, but still annoying.. They wait the maximum days to respond to your requests. Of the 50 or so I've submitted, I'd say 45 of them have been last minute. 25 times out of the 50, sure... but most? It's a lot of work if it gets to that point, yep, but I've only ever needed my lawyer to file a suit. The average FOIA might take me 5 minutes to write, so it's not really that much time - especially considering what you get for it. Here's an example one with some pretty neat data from it: https://github.com/red-bin/chitickets https://github.com/red-bin/chitickets
  - ChrisDutrow 11y ago
    That's fascinating. It sounds like mostly the requests are rejected because of lack of time / lack of skills / laziness then?
    - bpchaps 11y ago
      Yep. (This post got a lot longer than I was hoping. Hope you find it interesting!) That ticket data is actually managed by IBM, so that even adds an annoying translation dynamic. This current suit is because the city thinks it's 'unduly burdensome' to resolve city-owned phone numbers to names that were dialed by Chicago's mayor. Initially I could have understood that, but it became pretty clear pretty soon that they really didn't want me to have those records with these rejections: Some more detail on the rejections I've been through this past year and 4 months: -Original request asked for the mayor's records. Rejected for "no such records". Heh. -Second was for the FOIA officer's phone records. Again, "No such records". (This was just a test to see if the mayor's phone was the only one without any records..... and it was kinda funny ;)) -Sent a request to Chicago's IT dept for their VOIP logs, which got me a file with the first 6 digits of all of non-government phones that were dialed. Government phones were completely redacted for "privacy" reasons. So, so many things wrong there.. especially since FOIA specifically disallows that sort of redaction. -Sent a "Request For Review" to the attorney general's office, who took 6 months to agree with me and told the FOIA officer to give me the records. Chicago's lawyers then threw the VOIP request out, since they don't have VOIP. The assistant attorney general on the case and my lawyer both said (paraphrased) "They're right, but that's a total dick move and they know it." -Submitted a cleaned up request, without "VOIP". They sent the same file from before. Same creation time and everything. -Now we're waiting through the long court process... About the attorney general's RFR process, though.. You can submit FOIA requests anonymously, but you can't submit RFRs anonymously! Their reasoning was that I need to have a valid signature with my named spelled out in plain text, despite ESIGN allowing pseudonyms. So - don't like that anonymous person? Just don't respond to their request and they'll either have to sue using their name or submit an RFR using their name. I fought that one for about a month and eventually submitted a FOIA request to the AG's office asking for the email chain that led to that decision. That got rejected with something like "deliberation discussions cannot be released."

AckSyn 11y ago

https://firstamendmentcoalition.org/2009/06/non-response-to-foia-request/ https://firstamendmentcoalition.org/2009/06/non-response-to-...