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Kind of a sidenote, but I'm continually surprised that agencies that get hit with an FOIA request are allowed to be the arbiters of whether the request should b
by xenocyon 7y ago
Kind of a sidenote, but I'm continually surprised that agencies that get hit with an FOIA request are allowed to be the arbiters of whether the request should be granted or not.
- ceejayoz 7y agoWell, that's step one. If there's a disagreement, it can go to the courts. > After ProPublica sued in federal court, the agency dropped that objection and released the records.
- xenocyon 7y agoBut the burden of proof should be the other way around. The agency should have to be the one to go to court for a denial, rather than the burden lying on the citizen to sue to get the request granted.
- torstenvl 7y agoThat's unworkable. The vast majority of records of any given agency are non-releasable. The federal courts would be inundated and/or Congress would have to set up an entire system of administrative courts just to deal with the deluge of every divorcing spouse who wants to know the balance of his or her spouse's Thrift Savings Plan and every request for an internal phone roster or personnel disciplinary files. Your proposal would effectively gut the Privacy Act.
- ceejayoz 7y agoThat's how you get legal DDoSing. 4chan would get a few thousand people to file requests for things like "all CIA agents deployed in Russia" and trigger a billion dollars in legal fees.