
FBI launches eFOIA System for faster FOIA requests - dan-silver
https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2015/november/new-efoia-system
======
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.

------
tristanj
They're trying to spin this as a "good" thing but I believe the reason they're
doing this is more selfish: they're trying to stop people from making
multiple, slightly different FOIA requests on the same topic and getting back
different censored results. On one request, some parts might be censored, but
on another that part may be uncensored. By making multiple requests you can
open more and more windows on the actual document.

Here is a 2013 article on someone cleverly abusing this tactic [1]. With the
new system in place they'll be able to spot and prevent these tactics more
easily.

[1] [http://motherjones.com/politics/2013/11/foia-ryan-shapiro-
fb...](http://motherjones.com/politics/2013/11/foia-ryan-shapiro-fbi-files-
lawsuit)

------
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...](https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-
america-10/fbi-file-of-leslie-nelson-278/)

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.

~~~
bradleyjg
My dad put in a FOIA request for my grandfather's FBI file back in April and
has gotten nothing but a form letter with a case number so far.

The FOIA law requires agencies to ordinarily respond with twenty business
days, thirty business days in "unusual circumstances" and longer than that
only in "exceptional circumstances".

However, as bad as the FBI's disrespect for the law is, it doesn't hold a
candle to the State Department which has been sitting on a FOIA request of
mine since July of 2013. Their attitude seems to be that they don't have to
comply with duly enacted laws until and unless compelled to do so by a federal
judge.

~~~
threatofrain
That's exactly how we should think of things too; mechanically. Even if the
FBI today were morally ideal and responded to serious requests within the
limits of their bureaucratic ability without stonewalling, that's not
something we should depend on.

We should depend on levers and mechanisms.

------
morisy
You can also just email FOIA requests to foiparequest@ic.fbi.gov

Emailing also doesn't require uploading a scan of your driver's license or
limit you to one request a day, which the new system does.

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trollian
"eFOIA is currently closed. Typically, eFOIA operates Sunday through Saturday,
8am to 10pm Eastern time.

Please try again within those hours."

 _sigh_

~~~
mc32
Eh, you know, I wish more businesses would actually do this with their online
activities. This kind of inconvenience, would force people into doing other,
perhaps more fulfilling activities and remind them of the physical aspect of
life -things begin and stop. I'm not saying a FOIA isn't fulfilling, but if
Amazon, Walmart, Facebook, could "close down" for given times zones during a
wee hours window, it might not be a bad thing. If nothing else, I'd like to
see the outcomes.

Now, of course, no one is going to jeopardize sales and do that... but I'm
glad some of the gov't tries to keep it's business hours based on human labor
concepts. A kind of skeuochron.

~~~
Natanael_L
Why should _their_ schedule decide?

------
awqrre
"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?

~~~
toomuchtodo
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](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/FolderID/1/SessionID/%7B67E8C06C-025F-...](https://www.ssdmf.com/FolderID/1/SessionID/%7B67E8C06C-025F-4655-B580-317A322A30C3%7D/PageVars/Library/InfoManage/Guide.htm)

~~~
awqrre
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.

~~~
toomuchtodo
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.

~~~
apaprocki
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...](https://m.fbi.gov/#https://www.fbi.gov/foia/requesting-fbi-records)

~~~
toomuchtodo
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](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.

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barney54
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.

~~~
jedberg
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?

~~~
ant6n
Believing in this kind of argument is accepting corruption.

It's kind of like saying "why should the parties in power fix the electoral
system if they benefit from it".

~~~
x1798DE
I don't think the point of the argument is that it's a good state of affairs.
The point is the incentives are wrong, so obviously this will happen. Hoping
the FBI's heart grows the sizes won't get you anywhere.

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lsh
I don't see the FOIA Machine mentioned anywhere:
[https://www.foiamachine.org/](https://www.foiamachine.org/)

Kickstarted and now doing amazing things.

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mystique
How is this different than
[http://www.foiaxpress.com/](http://www.foiaxpress.com/) ?

