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The FOIA should not allow anyone to launch a denial of service attack on the government. The requester can specify the scope or the timeline. Not both. If my
by Arainach 5y ago
The FOIA should not allow anyone to launch a denial of service attack on the government.
The requester can specify the scope or the timeline. Not both. If my employer asked me to review this much content I would also give a timeline on the order of years. Saying "too bad, it has to be faster" doesn't change my estimate.
- tagoregrtst 5y agoDOS attacks were pioneered by progressives in the 60s. We’ve had 60 years to make the system robust to DOD attacks
- LegitShady 5y agoI have no problem with that, but if the paperwork isn’t produced, the FDA can’t enforce or use any of the process for any reason because its not transparent. Take as long as you want, just lose any legal power those documents give you so that you aren’t unjustly using them if there is evidence of some kind of fraud or other issues. Take 100 years, but for those 100 years the paperwork can’t be used with any legal authority because its not transparent. Problem solved.
- Arainach 5y agoThat is once again absurd and amounts to a denial of service attack. Reviewing documents for public disclosure, removing PII, etc. is a totally different process from reviewing their accuracy for medical purposes. It takes at least as long, probably longer.
- jcranmer 5y agoOr maybe, if you think the FDA did something wrong, you should have enough of an idea of what it did wrong that you could confirm it by asking for something less than literally everything Pfizer ever submitted to the FDA? If you're asking for that much information, that suggests that you're undertaking a fishing expedition rather than actually substantively accusing the FDA of something wrong.
- tptacek 5y agoYeah, but you're allowed to fish, even if what you're fishing for is dumb. The obligation is for the government to provide transparency, not for it to proctor investigations.
- Mountain_Skies 5y agoWe're spending TRILLIONS of dollars on this pandemic. TRILLIONS! These FOIA requests are not DOS attacks. It's very clear that some are very scared of what these FOIA requests might reveal rather than a concern about the cost of spending 0.000001% of the response budget on it. Why are you personally so scared of what the documents might reveal? It's nothing to do with imaginary DOS attacks.
- Arainach 5y agoI am all for the documents being released eventually, but it takes time to remove PII from 450,000 pages of medical records (themselves very dense with PII). I am not in favor of releasing them prematurely with identifying information, nor am I in favor of requiring an entire department to stop their (more important than this process) jobs at the whim of someone who doesn't even know what they're looking for.
- lesuorac 5y agoIf by we you mean the FDA then no they are not. Additionally said trillions aren't allocated to redacting documents so it really is like saying w're spending trillions on the military so deploy the national guard to redact the files. It's apples & oranges. As outlined in the article, the FDA only has 10 people trained to do redactions and that's for all FOIA requests. Requesting 10 people to redact ~300k documents is going to delay (aka deny service) to anybody else requesting FOIA requests for the next year.