The FOIA blog

FOIA.Gov Portal Not Forwarding Requests To Agencies

Here's a Sunshine Week celebratory story.  I made a request last month to an agency via FOIA.Gov (per the agency's instructions).  I was assigned an ID for the request from FOIA.Gov.  I checked the status today and was told that none of the requests from the portal were being forwarded to the agency, which of course defeats the whole purpose of the portal.  Somewhere, Joseph Heller is laughing at us.

FBI Building Appraisal and Offers Ordered Released

The United States District Court for the District of Columbia has ordered the General Services Administration to release its appraisal of the value of the FBI's Headquarters building and any offers it received for the building according to Federal News Network.  The Court found that the documents did not meet the criteria of the deliberative process privilege as they weren't pre-decisional and were created after the GSA's decision to not move forward on its plan for the FBI building had already been made.

 

FBI Loses Exemption 7E Glomar Case

The FBI has lost its novel attempt to use a Glomar response for Exemption 7E.  The case brought by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in the District Court for the District of Columbia found that the FBI's utilization of a Glomar response (can neither confirm not deny that records exist) for records pertaining to instances the FBI used fake documentary film crews as a law enforcement technique was inappropriate.  The FBI will now have to either confirm that records exist (and process them accordingly) or state that there are no records.  The case can be found here.

This is the second Glomar related case lost by the Department of Justice in the past year - last year the Office of Legal Council lost a bid to invoke a Glomar response with respect to Exemption 5.  [Ed. Note - I was the attorney of record for the plaintiff on that decision].