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And yet, through all of this, it's still easier and takes less time for them to violate our privacy rights than it is for private citizens gather similar data a

by bpchaps 10y ago

And yet, through all of this, it's still easier and takes less time for them to violate our privacy rights than it is for private citizens gather similar data about elected officials and information regarded as "public". I've been trying to get Chicago's mayor's office's phone records for a while now. 1.5 years, 4 FOIAs to two different city departments, state's attorney FOIA request for review, redactions left and right, a fight for AG anonymity, and a lawsuit later, I got a list of phone numbers and created [0]. The amount of pushback and bad interpretation of FOIA that prevented me, or anyone else, in getting that data was shameful. And after all of that, the judge didn't give me the FOIA suit payout since the city eventually "complied". It's no wonder nobody actually tries to make positive change - it's just so damn hard. [0] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hgG79eIr8MbkjYrCvcTRN8n876KL8aXYYu5it8Lg0g8/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hgG79eIr8MbkjYrCvcTR... edit: cleaned up a wee. Also, that link's for the whole office suite, not just the room the mayor calls his office. Please don't try to come to any direct conclusions.

jordanb 10y ago
Wow nice work. I'm glad you persevered. What they finally gave you is hilarious. The first design feature of the panopticon is that any inmate can be seen by the guards at any time without his knowledge. The second equally important design feature is that the inmate can never see the guard, can never see what he's up to or who he is looking at. Or even if he's around. In the present context this manifests itself in the above hilarious obstructionism against FOIA and open government, and more ominously in Obama's war against whistle blowers.
- bpchaps 10y ago
  Thanks :). What's absurd is that they released (redacted) numbers for phones outside of government, but claimed that even redacted government phones were exempt from release. Because of privacy reasons, and because they'd be interrupted at home. So, they essentially gave themselves FOIA privacy while giving strangers information on strangers. The judge eventually just told them to just Google the phone numbers as a check if they're public numbers. They followed with other checks, and a longish list of numbers was the result. There was one government phone redacted, but we got the name of the person a bit later, with just a name, no number.
danso 10y ago
Great work, nice to see people exercise FOIA laws and show the results...but I do have to jump to one question...So these are calls from the mayor's office? You list one receiving number as belonging to "Aura - Prestige Club"...any more information on that call (e.g. the duration, the time of day, etc)?
- bpchaps 10y ago
  Thanks! These are just outbound calls. I get the data from their billing system through their IT department, and I don't think they get charged for incoming. I submitted two requests earlier to get that info and hopefully more. "Unduly burdensome" is a lame, so it has to be done in piecemeal. We'll see.
  - danso 10y ago
    Thanks for the info, and hope it results in the full record being put out, although even going through the process and being able to document its failures is a big win for the civic sphere. And it seems Mayor Emanuel (from an outsider's perspective) is at a relatively high point of punch-bagginess after the alleged coverup of the Laquan McDonald shooting. I was curious to see if your request (or anything to do with phone calls) was in the published FOIA log [0] by the mayor's office...maybe it is/isn't (I don't know who you are)...but it seems that they've been slow to update the log, with no new records since August 2015. Other FOIA logs, such as the 311 requests [1] (though not the police), seem to still be updated. [0] https://data.cityofchicago.org/FOIA/FOIA-Request-Log-Office-of-the-Mayor/srzw-dcvg https://data.cityofchicago.org/FOIA/FOIA-Request-Log-Office-... [1] https://data.cityofchicago.org/FOIA/FOIA-Request-Log-311/j2p9-gdf5 https://data.cityofchicago.org/FOIA/FOIA-Request-Log-311/j2p...
    - bpchaps 10y ago
      This kindle can't load socrata right, but that timeframe makes sense. After the initial request for the mayor's records directly, I did another to the FOIA officer to see if it was just the mayor without records. I actually got the records by a request to their IT Dept for the mayor's office's VoIP logs. They ended up getting me info from the phone's billing system, but redacted. It took six months or so of waiting for AG to agree with my arguments to unredact the records. Chicago's lawyer then swooped in and called a technical foul... since they don't use VoIP, so the request was invalidated. A nearly identical request later (without "VoIP") and they sent me the exact same PDF as before along with a claim of unduly burdensome to discover if the numbers were releasable or not. So then we sued.
afarrell 10y ago
Part of the problem is that the state which has the strongest Open Government laws in the country is a laughingstock as a result of them. https://reddit.com/r/floridaman https://reddit.com/r/floridaman
- bpchaps 10y ago
  There's definitely a middle ground, though, and regulating FOIA to prevent abuse would do well in avoiding situations like /r/floridaman. It's not what the spirit of FOIA is for, so penalties (eg, requests are handled slower, as IL does) should definitely happen. Chicago's FOIA officers seem to be pretty good with not giving too much information out, but they slip sometimes. Some other data I have includes all of Chicago's parking tickets, including license plates, but the only reason I was able to get that was because of a slipup that resulted in the tribune getting all red light camera ticket's license plate info. If they'd followed foia properly there, I wouldn't have been able to get license plates. That, and it would've been within reason if they rejected my request for plate info, so I'd've just moved on. Definitely slippery slope territory, though.

by bpchaps 10y ago

jordanb 10y ago

Wow nice work. I'm glad you persevered. What they finally gave you is hilarious. The first design feature of the panopticon is that any inmate can be seen by the guards at any time without his knowledge. The second equally important design feature is that the inmate can never see the guard, can never see what he's up to or who he is looking at. Or even if he's around. In the present context this manifests itself in the above hilarious obstructionism against FOIA and open government, and more ominously in Obama's war against whistle blowers.

bpchaps 10y ago
Thanks :). What's absurd is that they released (redacted) numbers for phones outside of government, but claimed that even redacted government phones were exempt from release. Because of privacy reasons, and because they'd be interrupted at home. So, they essentially gave themselves FOIA privacy while giving strangers information on strangers. The judge eventually just told them to just Google the phone numbers as a check if they're public numbers. They followed with other checks, and a longish list of numbers was the result. There was one government phone redacted, but we got the name of the person a bit later, with just a name, no number.

danso 10y ago

Great work, nice to see people exercise FOIA laws and show the results...but I do have to jump to one question...So these are calls from the mayor's office? You list one receiving number as belonging to "Aura - Prestige Club"...any more information on that call (e.g. the duration, the time of day, etc)?

bpchaps 10y ago
Thanks! These are just outbound calls. I get the data from their billing system through their IT department, and I don't think they get charged for incoming. I submitted two requests earlier to get that info and hopefully more. "Unduly burdensome" is a lame, so it has to be done in piecemeal. We'll see.
- danso 10y ago
  Thanks for the info, and hope it results in the full record being put out, although even going through the process and being able to document its failures is a big win for the civic sphere. And it seems Mayor Emanuel (from an outsider's perspective) is at a relatively high point of punch-bagginess after the alleged coverup of the Laquan McDonald shooting. I was curious to see if your request (or anything to do with phone calls) was in the published FOIA log [0] by the mayor's office...maybe it is/isn't (I don't know who you are)...but it seems that they've been slow to update the log, with no new records since August 2015. Other FOIA logs, such as the 311 requests [1] (though not the police), seem to still be updated. [0] https://data.cityofchicago.org/FOIA/FOIA-Request-Log-Office-of-the-Mayor/srzw-dcvg https://data.cityofchicago.org/FOIA/FOIA-Request-Log-Office-... [1] https://data.cityofchicago.org/FOIA/FOIA-Request-Log-311/j2p9-gdf5 https://data.cityofchicago.org/FOIA/FOIA-Request-Log-311/j2p...
  - bpchaps 10y ago
    This kindle can't load socrata right, but that timeframe makes sense. After the initial request for the mayor's records directly, I did another to the FOIA officer to see if it was just the mayor without records. I actually got the records by a request to their IT Dept for the mayor's office's VoIP logs. They ended up getting me info from the phone's billing system, but redacted. It took six months or so of waiting for AG to agree with my arguments to unredact the records. Chicago's lawyer then swooped in and called a technical foul... since they don't use VoIP, so the request was invalidated. A nearly identical request later (without "VoIP") and they sent me the exact same PDF as before along with a claim of unduly burdensome to discover if the numbers were releasable or not. So then we sued.

afarrell 10y ago

Part of the problem is that the state which has the strongest Open Government laws in the country is a laughingstock as a result of them. https://reddit.com/r/floridaman https://reddit.com/r/floridaman

bpchaps 10y ago
There's definitely a middle ground, though, and regulating FOIA to prevent abuse would do well in avoiding situations like /r/floridaman. It's not what the spirit of FOIA is for, so penalties (eg, requests are handled slower, as IL does) should definitely happen. Chicago's FOIA officers seem to be pretty good with not giving too much information out, but they slip sometimes. Some other data I have includes all of Chicago's parking tickets, including license plates, but the only reason I was able to get that was because of a slipup that resulted in the tribune getting all red light camera ticket's license plate info. If they'd followed foia properly there, I wouldn't have been able to get license plates. That, and it would've been within reason if they rejected my request for plate info, so I'd've just moved on. Definitely slippery slope territory, though.