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To be fair, I've worked at federal agencies on the receiving end of FOIA requests and for every reasonable and actionable request there are a number of unhinged

To be fair, I've worked at federal agencies on the receiving end of FOIA requests and for every reasonable and actionable request there are a number of unhinged, overreaching, and ill-defined requests that all were handled with due process. These ones tied up limited resources delaying responses for all requests. It was a poisoned well. But your point is well taken and I have no doubt in some situations FOIAs have been slow-walked to dissuade criticism.

_jal 5y ago
There is a huge amount of documented history of FOIA games a google search away. I have zero patience for public employees treating the public with contempt. I know it is a hassle, but dealing with the nutters is part of the job. Public employees that treat the public with contempt need to find a different way to feed themselves.
- pc86 5y ago
  It's possible to treat "the nutters" with well-deserved contempt while treating reasonable people reasonably.
  - _jal 5y ago
    Not as an FOI officer. Who decides who is nutty? Some well documented stories: https://www.propublica.org/article/delayed-denied-dismissed-failures-on-the-foia-front https://www.propublica.org/article/delayed-denied-dismissed-...
    - pc86 5y ago
      I'm not saying it's a clear cut thing, and reasonable people can disagree about the reasonableness of an individual FOIA request in the gray areas. A decent public servant will give folks the benefit of the doubt even when they clearly have political motives. But, I don't see any reason to give any benefit of the doubt to people submitting FOIA requests on vaccine microchips, or chemtrails, or conspiratorial nonsense like that.
      - throwawaygh 5y ago
        > But, I don't see any reason to give any benefit of the doubt to people submitting FOIA requests on vaccine microchips, or chemtrails, or conspiratorial nonsense like that. Gov officials don't have to give the the benefit of the doubt. But gov officials do have to respond in a timely and accurate manner to the requests. In this case, that probable means running the equivalent of a ctrl+F over various explicitly enumerated databases for "vaccine microchips" or "chemtrails" and replying "sorry, zero results".
- achandlerwhite 5y ago
  In my experience we treated the nutty requests with full respect -- but they tied up the system. We had a full office dedicated to responding to requests but it still was a slow process. It was a poisoned well in the sense that it was the public with unreasonable requests that messed it up for others in the public. Most of the games I've seen were at local and state level where the sheriff or police chief would just say "nah" or ignore with no accountability.
- handrous 5y ago
  Ain't seen what dedicated Sovereign Citizens can come up with when they decide to go all mountain-of-paperwork on an agency, have you? Any amount of time spent on those is a waste of time, and they absolutely deserve contempt.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Schiendelman 5y ago
The only way to really solve this is to make all potentially responsive data available to the public by default, via API.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  This is an AGI-hard problem that's roughly equivalent to "convert arbitrary free-form natural language text into a program that queries over arbitrary databases, email servers, or even physical records". Actually, even worse than that, because FOIA requests are often written by non-lawyers trying to sound like they're lawyers. So the free form natural language text is horribly tortured pseudo-legalese.
  - edoceo 5y ago
    AGI = Artificial General Intelligence
  - Schiendelman 5y ago
    I don’t think so. I think it’s having all the comms in the open, and ensuring people can access that data and sort through it themselves.
    - throwawaygh 5y ago
      1. FOIA/sunshine requests cover a lot of ground. Tons of stuff that isn't digitized or easily dumped to the internet is none-the-less subject to FOIA. 2. Still more is subject to FOIA but requires by-hand PII filtering before release. 3. TONS of stuff that's not subject to FOIA/sunshine passes through .gov Exchange email servers.
      - Schiendelman 5y ago
        1) Yep, difficult to start digitizing everything but that’s well understood. 2) Not if you build the system in (1) to ensure that happens. 3) I am saying we should start making basically everything subject to FOIA unless it’s part of an established process (like bid discussions) that would delay that. Not saying it’s easy. I am saying it’s not the set of problems in the grandparent comment if you build your systems to fail open.

_jal 5y ago

There is a huge amount of documented history of FOIA games a google search away. I have zero patience for public employees treating the public with contempt. I know it is a hassle, but dealing with the nutters is part of the job. Public employees that treat the public with contempt need to find a different way to feed themselves.

pc86 5y ago
It's possible to treat "the nutters" with well-deserved contempt while treating reasonable people reasonably.
- _jal 5y ago
  Not as an FOI officer. Who decides who is nutty? Some well documented stories: https://www.propublica.org/article/delayed-denied-dismissed-failures-on-the-foia-front https://www.propublica.org/article/delayed-denied-dismissed-...
  - pc86 5y ago
    I'm not saying it's a clear cut thing, and reasonable people can disagree about the reasonableness of an individual FOIA request in the gray areas. A decent public servant will give folks the benefit of the doubt even when they clearly have political motives. But, I don't see any reason to give any benefit of the doubt to people submitting FOIA requests on vaccine microchips, or chemtrails, or conspiratorial nonsense like that.
    - throwawaygh 5y ago
      > But, I don't see any reason to give any benefit of the doubt to people submitting FOIA requests on vaccine microchips, or chemtrails, or conspiratorial nonsense like that. Gov officials don't have to give the the benefit of the doubt. But gov officials do have to respond in a timely and accurate manner to the requests. In this case, that probable means running the equivalent of a ctrl+F over various explicitly enumerated databases for "vaccine microchips" or "chemtrails" and replying "sorry, zero results".
achandlerwhite 5y ago
In my experience we treated the nutty requests with full respect -- but they tied up the system. We had a full office dedicated to responding to requests but it still was a slow process. It was a poisoned well in the sense that it was the public with unreasonable requests that messed it up for others in the public. Most of the games I've seen were at local and state level where the sheriff or police chief would just say "nah" or ignore with no accountability.
handrous 5y ago
Ain't seen what dedicated Sovereign Citizens can come up with when they decide to go all mountain-of-paperwork on an agency, have you? Any amount of time spent on those is a waste of time, and they absolutely deserve contempt.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Schiendelman 5y ago

The only way to really solve this is to make all potentially responsive data available to the public by default, via API.

throwawaygh 5y ago
This is an AGI-hard problem that's roughly equivalent to "convert arbitrary free-form natural language text into a program that queries over arbitrary databases, email servers, or even physical records". Actually, even worse than that, because FOIA requests are often written by non-lawyers trying to sound like they're lawyers. So the free form natural language text is horribly tortured pseudo-legalese.
- edoceo 5y ago
  AGI = Artificial General Intelligence
- Schiendelman 5y ago
  I don’t think so. I think it’s having all the comms in the open, and ensuring people can access that data and sort through it themselves.
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    1. FOIA/sunshine requests cover a lot of ground. Tons of stuff that isn't digitized or easily dumped to the internet is none-the-less subject to FOIA. 2. Still more is subject to FOIA but requires by-hand PII filtering before release. 3. TONS of stuff that's not subject to FOIA/sunshine passes through .gov Exchange email servers.
    - Schiendelman 5y ago
      1) Yep, difficult to start digitizing everything but that’s well understood. 2) Not if you build the system in (1) to ensure that happens. 3) I am saying we should start making basically everything subject to FOIA unless it’s part of an established process (like bid discussions) that would delay that. Not saying it’s easy. I am saying it’s not the set of problems in the grandparent comment if you build your systems to fail open.