
Governments turn tables by suing public records requesters - chaostheory
https://apnews.com/7f6ed0b1bda047339f22789a10f64ac4
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dvdhnt
Many of us love to pat ourselves on the back for all the "free" knowledge and
information available thanks to the internet, ignoring that most of what is
available is merely entertainment and opinion.

Stories like this are a good reminder that the most valuable information is
still being concealed by those with the power. They use their position, money,
and authority to protect it at all costs.

We still have a long way to go.

~~~
Chathamization
That's true, but there's still a ton of useful information freely available
out there that gets ignored. For the vast majority of people the problem isn't
lack of access to information that the government is concealing, but rather
lack of interest in useful information they can access in seconds.

That's not to say that lack of access isn't a major problem - it is - but even
when you solve that, you're going to be left with the much bigger lack of
interest problem.

~~~
Markoff
i don't think the problem is really lack of interest, but form in what is
information delivered. if you give me 200 pages text document ful of numbers,
nobody will bother to read it, if you make simple infographic based on this
document you will see people are interested

~~~
abakker
In other words, if you do the analysis and the work, and provide the opinion
and results for free?

~~~
lovich
What you said is technically true, but it is literally impossible for someone
to be up to date on every piece of information that affects them. Even just
limiting the domain to legal terms, the US government doesn't know how many
laws it has. How is someone supposed to "do the analysis and work" on all of
that, on all of the terms of services for every single product that exists,
all the information pertinent to their health, for companies they never even
consented to work with ala Facebook and Equifax data tracking, etc?

It's extremely disingenuous to call people lazy for not analyzing all of that
when there is not a single person on the planet who has done so

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pdshrader
Lawyer here, but not your lawyer.

Anti-SLAPP laws are pretty limited, but a peer over in /r/law had a phenomenal
idea for addressing this, which I'm copying over here. There's a little
something called a

"'Motion to dismiss for failure to exhaust administrative remedies.'

The fun part is that this is normally used by government entities against
citizens. I just don't see any obvious reason it couldn't be used by a citizen
against a government agency that has filed a lawsuit the entire point of which
is to thwart the exhaustion of an administrative process.

After all, citizens aren't allowed to sue for open records until the open
records process is completed, one way or the other. Why should a government
entity be permitted to sue before then?"

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smsm42
Misleading title. While technically lawsuit names the requesters as
defendants, what is implied - that they are under threat of civil or criminal
penalties as retaliation for requesting the info - is not what in fact
happens. What in fact happens is that the agencies ask the court to keep the
records unpublished. Which sucks, but it's not an action against the
requesters - it's just an attempt to keep the records from being disclosed,
and in no way threatens people personally.

It indeed sucks that you have to go to court, at your own expense, to defend
your lawful right to see information that has to be public. But that has been
the case for years, nonprofits like EFF or Judicial Watch has been doing this
for years, supported by donations. There's nothing new in this.

~~~
vilhelm_s
The article strongly implies that this _is_ a new development. What it talks
about is government agencies who start a lawsuit instead of granting or
denying a FOIA request.

> State freedom-of-information laws generally allow requesters who believe
> they are wrongly denied records to file lawsuits seeking to force their
> release. If they succeed, government agencies can be ordered to pay their
> legal fees and court costs. Suing the requesters flips the script: Even if
> agencies are ultimately required to make the records public, they typically
> will not have to pay the other side’s legal bills.

~~~
smsm42
OK, so that indeed is a new thing - they found a way to deny requests while
not getting legal fees shifted on them if they lose eventually. This is indeed
tricky and new. I just wish the article made it clearer that this is the
reportable bit.

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randomdrake
There is plenty of precedence for this in the United States and elsewhere.
There are even laws against it in a number of states and countries but it is
very difficult to write legislation for and enforce.

This category of abuse of our legal system is called "Strategic lawsuit
against public participation" or SLAPP.

More information can be found on the Wikipedia page:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation)

I'm surprised this wasn't mentioned in the article. I am not a lawyer, but it
would seem that these types of suits would fall squarely in the SLAPP
definition.

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fortythirteen
"Secrecy breeds incompetence because where there is failure, failure is kept
secret" \- Julian Assange

~~~
kafkaesq
Said to apply also to how Assange runs his own operations internally,
according to a variety of accounts.

Ironically enough.

~~~
mythrwy
We need a Wikileaks for Wikileaks.

~~~
TheBill
metaleaks?

------
twiss
> The lawsuits generally ask judges to rule that the records being sought do
> not have to be divulged. They name the requesters as defendants but do not
> seek damage awards.

Weird. Don't you at least have to allege that the defendants did something
wrong to start a lawsuit? Even if the requested documents don't have to be
released, the requesters didn't do anything wrong. I feel like these lawsuits
should be dismissed.

~~~
tryingagainbro
Probably using the same law to weed out "troublemakers" that ask for a
bazillion records simply because they can. A nation of laws and all :) The
judges will sort it out and no one can (really) complain.

~~~
evilduck
Yeah I’ve seen this first hand when I was a government contractor. A guy would
come into the public information office once a week and request all the data
for a thing be printed for him. From 1973-present, every week. It was reams
and reams of paper and he could have just asked for the historical data once
and the previous week’s data each week if he was really interested in anything
besides being wasteful. Afaik it was within his right to ask for it and the
office had to comply.

~~~
colejohnson66
Doesn’t the FOIA allow the government to charge a “reasonable” amount for
labor?

~~~
evilduck
I’m not really well versed in the legal side. This also was a regular, well
used public info resource, not a singular FOIA request. It just happened to be
abused by an individual.

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Veelox
I think there are two cases that are brought up in this article. The first is
that some agencies file suit to stop or delay giving out the records that will
make them look bad. The second is that the agency has a legitimate concern
that if they disclose the info, then they will violate privacy rights and get
in big trouble.

Does anyone have suggestions on how to keep the first case from happening
while making sure privacy rights are respected?

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rflrob
> State freedom-of-information laws generally allow requesters who believe
> they are wrongly denied records to file lawsuits seeking to force their
> release. If they succeed, government agencies can be ordered to pay their
> legal fees and court costs. Suing the requesters flips the script: Even if
> agencies are ultimately required to make the records public, they typically
> will not have to pay the other side's legal bills.

IANAL, but this seems to me to be a perversion of the intent of the laws. I
would assume there are pretty clear statutes that indicate when one party can
be forced to pay the legal fees of the other (and that those statutes vary
from state to state), but aside from the labels of "Plaintiff" and
"Defendant", the roles of "Government" and "Citizen requesting records" seem
more natural, and should be what's relevant to the outcome of a contested FOIA
request.

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Gibbon1
This is what we did in California

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation#California)

~~~
smsm42
Anti-SLAPP is great, but the kind of lawsuit described in the article has
nothing to do with it, since the suits do not attack the speech rights but
seek to prevent disclosure. That's a completely different (and sort of
opposite, since they don't seek to prevent speech but to prevent them from
being compelled to speak - or, disclose documents) thing.

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alexandercrohde
Perhaps the solution is for the new policy to be that these datasets be kept
online (e.g. gcloud) with public, anonymous read-only users.

Then the entire problem is solved.

This is already done with a number of data-sets and should be the gold-
standard.

~~~
gjjrfcbugxbhf
The problem is that at least some of the freedom of information requests
conflicted with privacy rights.

~~~
markvdb
The solution is called automated anonymisation of data.

~~~
prdonahue
Oh, in that case.. sounds so simple! Nothing could go wrong here.

~~~
markvdb
Definitely complicated, but that should be the gold standard to aim for in the
future. A lot is possible that hasn't even been tried yet!

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dqpb
Can these agencies be counter sued for using tax payer money to sue tax payers
seeking "their own" data?

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kareldonk
This is especially good for those who think government exists to 'serve' them
and is their 'servant.' Maybe this will make them wake up to the reality of
who is actually the servant (slave). ;)

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nvr219
Oh how the turn tables...

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ringaroundthetx
gotta use the lawyer to file on your behalf, but in any case a more
streamlined process could be codified. all persons, natural or artificial,
will always have the courts as a remedy.

