As regular readers of the blog may recall, I'm counsel on a FOIA lawsuit agains the State Department for access to certain records pertaining to activities of that agency and the Cultural Property Advisory Committee. One of the plaintiffs, the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild, in this action has released this statement concerning the State Department's recent release of documents.
Today, bloggers everywhere are uniting, and hopefully posting messages about basic human rights.
Countries with transparent and open governments also are the ones with the least basic human right issues. The FOIA and other acts like it allow focus to be put on "what the government is doing." Countries, such as Burma, where there is no government transparency are able to easily take away human rights because there is no way for its citizens to know just what the government is up to. Today, I urge all countries to uphold basic human rights and enact freedom of information act laws.
Charles M. Miller writes this article about his request, the agency denial and his sucessful appeal to win release of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Field Manual. While the manual isn't being released in full, it's good to see that Miller pushed the government on this and is getting a copy (even if it is redacted) of it.
This article ran in Sunday's NY Times. It's another good description of how reporters and others use the material they get in response to FOIA requests.
I've probably beaten this to death, but it seems that there's some interest in it. Here's a detailed interview with Tisha Thompson about her quest for FBI records and why she got interested in the subject in the first place.
My latest LLRX.com article is up. In it, I propose some reporting requirements that should be required concerning FOIA litigation. While this isn't necessarily in some requester's best interests (chaos may be some requester's best friend), it would improve, in my opinion, FOIA performance government-wide.
The National Credit Union Administration Board has proposed these changes to its FOIA/Privacy Act regulations. According to the notice, the FOIA changes relate to recent amendments to the FOIA addressing procedural issues such as fee practices, time limits for complying with requests, and new reporting requirements. The changes to the Privacy Act provisions reflect the agency's efforts to clarify the procedures whereby individuals may obtain notification of whether an NCUA system of records contains information about the individual and access or amend a record. Comments about the changes must be received on or before June 24, 2008.
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board has published its update Fee Schedule. The fees are what the agency can charge for various activities it performs in response to FOIA requests.
Here's a little more to the story on FOX news which aired last night concerning FBI records.
Meredith Fuchs, General Counsel of the National Security Archive showed a letter from the FBI saying that the FBI had no records concerning Al Qaeda. When asked about this, the FBI, through David Hardy, said that the letter was simply a mistake, that an unknown employee pushed the wrong button and sent out the letter.
According to Fuchs, the National Security Archive administratively appealed the original no records response to the Department of Justice. To the Department of Justice's credit, they remanded the request back to the FBI for a new search. And then the FBI, in response to the new search, sent the National Security Archive another no records response!
Reach your own conclusion about whether or not it was just a simple mistake.
The DC Fox piece on FBI records can be found here. I'm featured on part 2 of the mismanaged secrets clip. By the way, my last name is actually pronounced Ho-des, in case you were wondering.
For those of you in the DC area, I'm interviewed tonight on the Fox5 10:00 news. If you don't see it, or aren't in the DC area, you'll be able to see it on Tuesday at myfoxdc.com. It's the story about the FBI.
