

FOIA Machine by The Center for Investigative Reporting - knowtheory
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cir/foia-machine/

======
toomuchtodo
How is this different than what Muckrock is doing?

[http://www.muckrock.com/](http://www.muckrock.com/)

"MuckRock is an open government tool powered by state and federal Freedom of
Information laws, a generous grant from the Sunlight Foundation, and you:
Requests are based on your questions, concerns and passions, and you are free
to embed, share and write about any of the verified government documents
hosted here. Want to learn more? Check out our about page."

~~~
shaneshifflett
FOIAMachine dev here. There are a few projects operating in the space and it
seems the more help being offered to get people asking their government for
data and documents the better off we'll all be. There's gonna be some overlap,
nothing is totally novel and I like to think FOIAMachine builds on some of the
great ideas that came before it, including those generated by MuckRock. I see
FOIAMachine different in a few ways. It has tighter controls for sharing
requests with specific people (or keeping them private). We're building
controls so you can make requests more social. What that means is sharing a
request with others to build support publicly. And of course, we'll share what
users make available via an API. Also, while we're asking for funding now the
service will be totally free. It's built so users can help each other. It's
built so you have the tools to stay organized. Once the code is done the
hosting costs are minimal and it won't need much to keep the lights on and
help people create their requests. MuckRock and Alaveteli are great and their
creators have done yeoman's work. FOIAMachine approaches the problem from a
different angle and I think it'll be a useful tool for a lot of people.

~~~
morisy
"FOIAMachine approaches the problem from a different angle."

FOIA Machine has been telling me this since 2011, and yet you continue to copy
what we deploy, feature by feature. Seriously. I'd love to work together, and
I already offered to open source our source code for you, but that's not an
offer that has ever been taken up.

I'm always available to talk: Michael@MuckRock.com.

------
derefr
It's kind of funny--you know that subcomponent of PRISM where the government
sends a machine-readable subpoena, and a corporation, in response,
automatically runs a query to pull together a user's records and drop them in
a government-accessible dead-drop computer? If done correctly, this would
basically be the same thing, but for citizens "subpoenaing" government.

I say "if done correctly" because it currently sounds like it only handles the
"send" part of the FOIA request. It'd be a lot more convenient if it also used
the Center for Investigative Reporting as the receive address, scanned in and
OCRed all the FOIA'ed documents that get received... maybe even have some
lawyers pick through each received document and provide analysis + highlight
interesting bits, like Groklaw does. Is that part of the plan? (The non-
receiving version could always be kept in place either way, for when people
want to just get at their own personal records.)

~~~
morisy
Hi derefr!

That's exactly how we operate, and we're working more on the "analysis" end of
things now ([https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2013/jun/25/booz-
alle...](https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2013/jun/25/booz-allen-
hamilton-contracts-help-analyze-thousan/)). Would love suggestions on how we
can do it better.

------
robinhouston
Another project with similar aims, which I worked on when I was employed by
MySociety and which is used in several countries around the world is
Alaveteli: [http://www.alaveteli.org/](http://www.alaveteli.org/)
[https://github.com/mysociety/alaveteli](https://github.com/mysociety/alaveteli)

Alaveteli is based on the code that has powered the British site
[http://www.WhatDoTheyKnow.com/](http://www.WhatDoTheyKnow.com/) for several
years.

~~~
polemic
Also used in New Zealand: [http://fyi.org.nz](http://fyi.org.nz) \- it's
awesome :D

~~~
mattjoyce
Also used in Australia :
[http://www.righttoknow.org.au](http://www.righttoknow.org.au)

------
eloisius
I couldn't quickly find if it is a proposed feature but...

A cool feature would be to crowd fund the feeds. After filing a request and it
makes it through to the fee portion, list it somewhere so that users can chip
in to unlock a request.

~~~
shaneshifflett
foiamachine developer here. this is a great idea. thanks so much!

------
wavesounds
It just reached its goal! Good job everyone!

------
teawithcarl
i just donated $25.

