Month: January 2013

A lawsuit brought against the government by the American Civil Liberties Union was decided in the Obama administration’s favor Wednesday. The ACLU filed suit after the White House denied a FOIA request they filed with two New York Times reporters seeking any documents pertaining to justifications for the classified “targeted killing” […]

A group of preservationists reached a settlement with a federal agency confronting the buffalo in the room–the Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s “pattern of practice” of failing to respond to FOIA requests. A settlement filed in Montana federal district court last week will require the agency […]

We talk a lot about the FOIA request process, and the transparency victories that follow, on this blog, but we have yet to get into the nitty-gritty of what the experience is like, the steps that need to be taken to file a FOIA request, and the responses one can […]

A letter requesting an extension for our request sent by Caitlin Q. Knutte, FOIA Officer & Assistant Attorney General in the Office of the Illinois Attorney General. See the full letter here: 22756 Extension Letter Transcription: January 10, 2013 RE: Freedom of Information Act Request 2012 FOIA 022756 Dear Mr. Loury [our president], Thank […]

Thanks for following our FOIA journey, folks! On Jan. 17, exactly two weeks after filing a FOIA request with the Office of the Illinois Attorney General requesting the names and contact info of the state’s FOIA officers, we got ’em, following a request for five more days to come up […]

Tracking our own FOIA debacles almost caused us to miss big transparency news in Illinois–a suit brought against Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka a week and a half ago over the office’s failure to produce the state’s checkbook under a valid FOIA request. Transparency advocates over at For the Good of […]

The FOIA Project will soon extend its tracking model to other agencies, starting with a test application applied to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A grant awarded to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, which hosts the project, by the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation will […]