Noted FOIA attorney David Sobel brought to our attention several inaccuracies in the Department of Justice’s recently issued 2012 FOIA Compliance and Litigation Report. Specifically, on page 15 of the listing, the DOJ reports that no fees or costs were stipulated for two three cases in which Mr. Sobel represented the plaintiff:
Excerpt from p. 15 of DOJ’s 2012 FOIA Compliance and Litigation Report
However, court documents for these two cases clearly stipulate fees to be paid by the government. (Edit: Although the stipulation for the first case, 12-551, had not been made until 2013, DOJ was misleading at best in stating that no fees had been ordered in 2012, as the case was not yet closed. In addition, DOJ erred in reporting that no fees were ordered in 2012 for the second case, 12-01265, a fact which was not noted in the original post.)
If you were involved in a FOIA lawsuit that received a decision in 2012, please check out the DOJ’s listing, and then contact us or leave a comment below to let us know how accurately the information reflects the status of your case.
23 new FOIA court documents
We have added 17 documents from 4 FOIA cases filed between April 14, 2013 and April 20, 2013. read more…
47 new FOIA court documents
We have added 46 documents from 9 FOIA cases filed between April 7, 2013 and April 13, 2013. read more…
43 new FOIA court documents
We have added 43 documents from 7 FOIA cases filed between March 31, 2013 and April 6, 2013. read more…
48 new FOIA court documents
We have added 48 documents from 8 FOIA cases filed between March 24, 2013 and March 30, 2013. read more…
8 new FOIA court documents
We have added 8 documents from 1 FOIA case filed between March 17, 2013 and March 23, 2013. read more…
32 new FOIA court documents
We have added 32 documents from 6 FOIA cases filed between March 10, 2013 and March 16, 2013. read more…
Before posting our March 14 report about the declining number of federal FOIA filings by the media, TRAC sent queries to three separate Wall Street Journal executives for comment. The queries, sent between March 8 and 11, informed the executives that a search of federal court records had not disclosed any FOIA filings by the paper during the past eight years, and requested comments about this absence. A copy of the tables which subsequently appeared in the report were provided at that time.
While they may not have filed any new FOIA lawsuits, the Wall Street Journal did file in court seeking to re-open a 1978 case. Dow Jones & Company, Inc., the Wall Street Journal’s publisher, asked the court to lift its injunction prohibiting the federal government from disclosing medical records reflecting federal payments made to doctors. The original 1978 lawsuit was classified by the court as a contract action rather than a FOIA case. However it should be classified, the Wall Street Journal’s action is an important effort to open up federal government records. See Florida Medical Association, Inc. et al v. Department of Health, Education and Welfare: Joseph A. Califano, Jr. et al, U.S. District Court in the Middle District of Florida (Jacksonville), Civil Docket #3:78-cv-00178 (docket and motion (docket item 61)).
We are grateful to the Wall Street Journal for bringing this to our attention after the report was published.
Syracuse, NY — A search by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) of thousands of federal court records indicates that media organizations as a whole appear to be challenging government secrecy at the federal level less often than in the past.
For example, during the last four years of the Bush administration (FY 2005 – 2008), news organizations filed a total of 22 lawsuits asking the federal courts to order the release of withheld government records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). By contrast, during the first four years of the Obama administration (FY 2009 – 2012), that number had fallen to 18 FOIA court actions.
Figure 1. Freedom of Information Lawsuits Filed by the Media
The decline does not seem to be related to a drop-off in the problem of government secrecy because, as noted in a recent FOIA Project study, the total number of FOIA lawsuits brought by all kinds of plaintiffs during the Obama administration’s first term was higher than in the last term of President Bush. An alternative interpretation is an increasing interest by a range of different FOIA users and a decreasing interest by the news business. read more…
Information on FOIA decisions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is now available on FOIAproject.org. The period of coverage for this ICE data is from October 1, 2010 through August 2012. Data will be updated on an ongoing basis as additional records arrive. This expansion was funded by grants from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation and the William B. Wiener, Jr. Foundation.
We plan to expand coverage of FOIA administrative decisions in several ways. A new “Add Documents” tool has just been added to allow the public to upload examples of how their FOIA requests were handled by federal agencies. And we will be systematically adding coverage of additional agencies, similar to what we’ve done for ICE, over the coming year.
How This Information Was Obtained
Each month, we submit FOIA requests to agencies for their “augmented FOIA logs” — information about each FOIA request the agency processed that month, including all request-specific data on which the agency will rely in compiling its end-of-year annual FOIA report.
Once the information is received, we process the files, compile the information into searchable databases, and add various tags to make it easier to analyze the data. We then summarize the data and develop a variety of statistics we use to measure agency performance.
Here is a detailed description of the information available on each FOIA request.
How to Access FOIA Request Data on ICE
Several tools are available to help you find, list, analyze and expand on the FOIA request data we’ve compiled. Here’s what we’ve got:
- Search requests. Case search tools let you search our data archives by the name and organization of the requestor, by the nature of the records requested, by the FOIA case tracking number, as well as various processing categories (fiscal year, requestor type, processing track, fee waiver, expedited, and subject type).
- Detail listing. From the results of your search, you can drill down to a detailed listing of the information we have for that request.
- Decisions by the numbers. Use this unique application to examine statistics on agency decisions and performance.
- Add documents. You are encouraged to upload correspondence concerning any FOIA request, such as the original request submission, the agency response(s), and administrative appeals. It is not necessary that the request be part of our existing inventory; we encourage interested users to extend coverage by sharing how any agency handled their request.
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