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FBI launches eFOIA System for faster FOIA requests

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Re: FBI launches eFOIA System for faster FOIA requests

#11

Post by maxlybbert »

jedberg wrote: post #3
barney54 wrote: post #2

Only now in 2015 the FBI fullfills FOIA requests electronically? That is incredible backward. I thought the Department of Interior was bad because they couldn't do global email searches on even global searches within a specific Bureau, but Interior is light years ahead of the FBI.

If you're the FBI, what motivation do you have to implement the system? No one ever use an FOIA request to get info about something good to praise them. It's always to get info to smear them. Why would they want to make this easier?

Even assuming that the people at the FBI are altruistic and don't care about whether FOIA requests will be used to smear them, I don't see what incentive they have to make the process easier for people making requests. Once they've complied with what they're legally required to do, other things will get attention in the budget.

Re: FBI launches eFOIA System for faster FOIA requests

#12

Post by apaprocki »

jedberg wrote: post #3
barney54 wrote: post #2

Only now in 2015 the FBI fullfills FOIA requests electronically? That is incredible backward. I thought the Department of Interior was bad because they couldn't do global email searches on even global searches within a specific Bureau, but Interior is light years ahead of the FBI.

If you're the FBI, what motivation do you have to implement the system? No one ever use an FOIA request to get info about something good to praise them. It's always to get info to smear them. Why would they want to make this easier?

As a counterexample, the FBI FOIA process is what allowed me to get the only surviving transcription of my grandfather's own words (He died before I was born). I'm incredibly grateful that we live in a system that lets people mine this information for their own reasons. It has been a treasure trove of information for me personally and the staff never hassled me. That goes as well for the NARA archive staff. If anyone on the FOIA team reads this, thank you.

Re: FBI launches eFOIA System for faster FOIA requests

#13

Post by awqrre »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #10
awqrre wrote: post #7

"If you are requesting information on a deceased individual, you will need to upload proof of death unless the deceased individual is more than 100 years old." The FBI doesn't know who is dead?

They could easily allow you to specify the SSN in the request, and verify it against the Social Security Death Index [1]. They just choose not to make it that easy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_Death_Index Disclaimer: One of my projects TODO is to crowdsource the funding of obtaining the SSDI quarterly from the SSA (its expensive [2]), and then provide it as an open API. [2] https://www.ssdmf.com…

They don't need to request the person's SSN... they could just choose not to release the data that is tied to a non-dead citizen since they already have their SSN, probably.

Re: FBI launches eFOIA System for faster FOIA requests

#14

Post by toomuchtodo »

awqrre wrote: post #13
toomuchtodo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could easily allow you to specify the SSN in the request, and verify it against the Social Security Death Index [1]. They just choose not to make it that easy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_Death_Index Disclaimer: One of my projects TODO is to crowdsource the funding of obtaining the SSDI quarterly from the SSA (its expensive [2]), and then provide it as an open API. [2] https://www.ssdmf.com…

They don't need to request the person's SSN... they could just choose not to release the data that is tied to a non-dead citizen since they already have their SSN, probably.

Their page specifically says if its not a first party request (you requesting information about you), you must submit a copy of the Social Security Death Index showing the person is deceased. Instead of the requestor needing to provide that page, they could simply verify the SSN you're providing, in combination with the person's name, against the Social Security Death Index file internally.

"If you are requesting information on a deceased individual, you will need to upload proof of death unless the deceased individual is more than 100 years old. Acceptable proof of death includes obituaries, death certificates, recognized sources that can be documented, written media, Who’s Who in America, an FBI file that indicates a person is deceased, or a Social Security Death Index page."

Emphasis mine.

Re: FBI launches eFOIA System for faster FOIA requests

#15

Post by apaprocki »

awqrre wrote: post #7

"If you are requesting information on a deceased individual, you will need to upload proof of death unless the deceased individual is more than 100 years old." The FBI doesn't know who is dead?

So imagine this was a company and a customer wanted a relative's data because they died. Wouldn't you require they deliver proper proof? The FOIA requests all work this way. They just want a cursory check that the person reasonably died so the government employee is not on the hook for verifying it. If you knowingly deliver false proof you are defrauding the federal government instead of a government employee on the hook for releasing records incorrectly because they made the wrong call. It allows any reasonably trained person to make sure the documentation was supplied correctly and process the request.

Re: FBI launches eFOIA System for faster FOIA requests

#16

Post by apaprocki »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #14
awqrre wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't need to request the person's SSN... they could just choose not to release the data that is tied to a non-dead citizen since they already have their SSN, probably.

Their page specifically says if its not a first party request (you requesting information about you), you must submit a copy of the Social Security Death Index showing the person is deceased. Instead of the requestor needing to provide that page, they could simply verify the SSN you're providing, in combination with the person's name, against the Social Security Death Index file internally. "If you are requesting inf…

Requests for information about living people are covered by Privacy Act (PA) requests, not FOIA requests.

https://m.fbi.gov/#https://www.fbi.gov/foia/requesting-fbi-r...

Re: FBI launches eFOIA System for faster FOIA requests

#17

Post by toomuchtodo »

apaprocki wrote: post #16
toomuchtodo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their page specifically says if its not a first party request (you requesting information about you), you must submit a copy of the Social Security Death Index showing the person is deceased. Instead of the requestor needing to provide that page, they could simply verify the SSN you're providing, in combination with the person's name, against the Social Security Death Index file internally. "If you are requesting inf…

Requests for information about living people are covered by Privacy Act (PA) requests, not FOIA requests. https://m.fbi.gov/#https://www.fbi.gov/foia/requesting-fbi-r...

The original post I replied to asked:

> "If you are requesting information on a deceased individual, you will need to upload proof of death unless the deceased individual is more than 100 years old."

> The FBI doesn't know who is dead?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10660342

I'm simply showing a) they do and b) they could make it much easier for specifying this in your request and verifying it.

Re: FBI launches eFOIA System for faster FOIA requests

#19

Post by danso »

The FBI is surprisingly responsive and "human" for FBI file (e.g. dead people records) requests, at least for the non-controversial ones. For example, MuckRock sent a records request for "Leslie Nielson" with no proof of death and yet the FBI (as far as I can see in the message chain) didn't give them a hard time about it: https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/fbi...

I recently sent in a request for Paul Newman and got nothing back (which was both very disappointing and surprising, given Nixon's well-known hatred of Newman, and Newman being an all-around big name and businessman)...the only hold up was that they required a snail mail address to send things to. I thought they had dropped my request but realized they had sent the "no records found" letter to my mailbox well before the required deadline.

Re: FBI launches eFOIA System for faster FOIA requests

#20

Post by hodwik »

Glad for the FBI. Getting something like this in place is a massive undertaking.

These organizations are all clamoring to get this sort of thing in place, it's a serious game changer, but it's frankly hard as hell.

I hear a lot of people suggesting these guys are dragging their feet on FOIA requests because they don't want to release their documents. So wrong. Anyone who has worked with large government or private sector document management knows the problems here.

No one (except really young organizations) has the centralized infrastructure in place to make this easy. They're looking at huge amounts of legacy systems, decades worth of warehouses filled with paper records, millions of new e-mails created daily. None of these systems are effectively integrated.

The company I work for has one of only a handful of FOIA systems being shopped to the government right now, and after seeing the hurdles going on here I can tell you first hand that these backlogs aren't because people are dragging their feet. We've been doing ECM stuff for 30 years now, and whenever we come into an organization like this it takes us ages just to help them sort out how to connect this stuff together.

But it's totally worth it. Every organization so far that has managed the move to an electronic FOIA system, despite the slight uptick in requests, has taken a huge bite out of their FOIA backlog just because electronic centralized systems make the FOIA response process so much easier.

Again, congrats to the guys over there. I'm sure this was incredibly hard to put in place.

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