I think there’s a way you could do this ethically, but personally I believe that the way you are implementing this is unethical. Obviously you are much more familiar with what you’re doing than I am, and I’d be happy to be convinced otherwise. But I think at the very least you could work on your messaging about this but there are a few things I noticed and raised yellow flags:
1. Primarily, you seem to mention winning your lawsuit and legal battle with the VA a lot to justify what you’re doing, but just because what you’re doing is legal does not make it ethical. I do not believe the FOIA was ever intended to be used to expose an API for accessing veterans’ medical records, and even if it did intend to do that for some reason, it would still be wrong to make that data completely available to the public.
2. Your framing of your legal battles with the VA gives me the impression that you are seeking to be vindictive or spiteful with your Fax-API. It’s hard to believe you are doing this because you care about Veterans when you’re actively forcing the VA to expend what I imagine must be considerable time and resources to comply with your requests. Maybe you do have a justifiable vendetta against them but I don’t see how this makes them any better.
3. Some of this data is so recent and potentially damaging that there seems no way to justify making it accessible to the public because of how it benefits genealogy or historians.
All that said I do genuinely believe that this could be an amazing resource for historians, genealogists, and people wanting to learn more about their deceased relatives. I just personally believe that when dealing with such sensitive data you have an obligation to treat it more carefully than you seem to be, even if you are justifying it to yourself as “just” making it 1000x easier to access and telling the world exactly how to do it through legal means.