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Pentagon Responds to FOIA with Ultimatum
- m3talridl3y 11y agoI hate it when people waste FOIA privilege on inconsequential minutiae like profiles of foreign leaders. Oh wow, what does the US think of Putin? What does Batman really think about Superman? What does it matter?
- serve_yay 11y agoThat is your response to this?!
- atourgates 11y agoFOIA is a right, not a privilege. And even if the only benefit of this FOIA request is figuring out what our government is spending their money on, it isn't a waste.
- m3talridl3y 11y agoMore like a privilege because my tax dollars pay for the sharpie that they have to use to black out "buttlord" from all of the documents. That really adds up.
- dTal 11y ago>figuring out what our government is spending our money on FTFY
- wehadfun 11y agoDid you read the whole article?
- sdoering 11y agoNot to feed this one, but my only reaction was WTF...
- danso 11y agoWow, way to miss the point. The "profiles of foreign leaders", according to the OP, comes from a Pentagon sanctioned study. The Pentagon is funded by American tax dollars. More importantly, these reports are unclassified and so there's no reason they shouldn't be in the public record. Even more importantly, someone at the Pentagon thought such a subject was important enough to waste money studying. Even even more importantly, that means there's a good chance that someone else at the Pentagon or State Dept. will use such information in some oblique way when making a policy decision. But yes, let's all go back to watching the Lifetime Channel and not think about government details unless it is really sexy sounding and can fit in an Upworthy headline.
- vidarh 11y agoTalk about missing the point. Firstly the reference to Putin points to a different article, whose focus was not on getting hold of "inconsequential minutiae" but on how much money the Pentagon is spending on this "inconsequential minutiae". If it is indeed "inconsequential minutiae" then that is absolutely in the public interest. Also, if these reports really were inconsequential minutiae, then presumably the effort expended for the Pentagon to hand it over would be maybe half an hour for a low level clerk to look up the (unclassified) report, confirm it can be released, and pass it on. (And if the Pentagon spent money on reports on what Batman really think about Superman, you don't think it would be in the public interest to know how wasteful they are?) But the issue raised in the article actually linked to here is the much more serious issue that in a lot of cases these government departments do whatever they can to avoid release of documents they are often legally bound to, and/or try to extract concessions out of the people filing the requests that they have no right to, and in the process severely reduce the kind of transparency the FOIA was brought in to provide.
- MrZongle2 11y agoWhy doesn't Mr. Leopold realize that our superiors in public service know what's best for the country and act accordingly, and shouldn't have to waste their time responding to plebians? /s Edit: because it seems to have been lost on many, the "/s" above indicates that the preceding is sarcasm.
- AC__ 11y agoYou're being sarcastic, correct? Or trolling?
- Aushin 11y agoMy sarcasm readings are off the chart for this one.
- imglorp 11y agoYes, that's what /s means.
- MrZongle2 11y agoSarcastic, which is why I included /s (a de facto emoticon of such) at the end. Although sarcasm isn't popular with some HN users, I felt that I could either post a longer, heartfelt diatribe about how this is wrong.... or I could convey the same opinion in less space and perhaps with a bit of humor by using sarcasm.
- protomyth 11y agoMrZongle2 is being sarcastic. Sadly, I have met the public official that would utter those words and, in fact, had uttered comments asking voters to shut up and just do what said official tells them to do. [edit: the official was an unelected bureaucrat]
- tehwebguy 11y agoI absolutely detest the sarcastic, cynical replies that always appear in the comments of stories like this. It feels good to write them, but reading them just fills me with a deep sense of defeat and sadness and they contribute little or nothing.
- bernardom 11y agoI met a guy at a party who started a news outfit[1] trying to simplify FOIA. He had stories like this galore- such as meeting gov't employees in person at conferences, saying his name, and seeing their eyes grow big. Apparently frequent requesters become notorious. [1] https://www.muckrock.com https://www.muckrock.com
- toomuchtodo 11y agoHuge shoutout for Muckrock. I use them extensively, and have worked with Michael (the founder) a bit. Can't say enough nice things. Please please please check out their site if you're doing FOIAs. There is a cost, but its minimal, and worth it. They'll help you manage the FOIA process, and whatever records are returned become public on Muckrock's site. Example: https://www.muckrock.com/foi/list/ https://www.muckrock.com/foi/list/
- eli 11y agoIndeed, some state FOIA laws even have provisions for dealing with "frequent requestors." (And to be fair, not all frequent requestors are acting in good faith. There was a push recently to bury the NSA in FOIA requests as a protest against surveillance. Not a great idea.) Muckrock is awesome though.
- morisy 11y agoYes, we haven't run into that problem so far, but I know Illinois has pretty strict rules on this.
- fweespeech 11y agoThat is solved by a weighted queue based on an individual and rate limiting based on budget. E.g. The Pentagon will answer 100,000 requests per month, each individual will have a spot in the queue, when a request is received the next request from that individual is at (N requests * -1) in weight. So: X, Request 1, 0 N, Request 2, 0 Z, Request 3, 0 A, Request 5, 0 Q, Request 7, 0 X, Request 4, -1 [will be weighted 0 for next month] X, Request 6, -2 [will be weighted -1 for next month]
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- fweespeech 11y agoI think it really shows how powerful the bureaucracy really is that they'd write down an essentially illegal ultimatum, confident that the consequences would be essentially nonexistent.
- some1else 11y ago“As a matter of policy, we don’t comment on legal matters,” says Defense Department spokeswoman Lt. Col. Valerie Henderson. This is very confusing. What was the question? As an aside: Would "sub judice" policy still make sense if we treated all speech the same? (under & not under oath)
- davidcollantes 11y agoWhat is FOIA?
- URSpider94 11y agoFreedom of Information Act. It's a US Federal law that allows private citizens to request that the government provide any records that it has in its files. The government likes to keep copies of EVERYTHING, so you can often turn up quite a bit of documentation. The law has very strict requirements on what can be withheld or redacted -- for example, the government can't withhold data just because it's embarrassing to them.
- bhayden 11y agoExcept in the cases where it actually is embarrassing, in which case it is redacted "for national security".
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