
My Journey to the Heart of the FOIA Request - samclemens
https://longreads.com/2017/09/20/my-journey-to-the-heart-of-the-foia-request/
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bpchaps
Good sauce. FOIA has been somewhat of an obsession of mine for a few years now
and I can't recommend its use enough. It's difficult, full of legal and non-
legal gotchas from front to back in every state I've sent requests to, but
damn is it worth it in the end. In particular, the direct visibility into how
our government works and how it communicates with requesters is extremely eye
opening. It's very, very non-reciprocal.

Fun and ongoing story.. Recently I did a request for the metadata of all
emails sent and received by a seattle.gov email address. They first gave me an
estimate of 32 million dollars, 320 years for redaction and 25k/yr for storing
a few tb. A few months later (and ~$35.00 later) , they ended up sending me
millions of emails on accident, thinking they only sent metadata. After
reporting it to their CPO and CTO, they decided to escalate the problem by
offering me legal indemnification for deleting the files and having a 3rd
party company scan my drives for those emails. It was never directly stated,
but it sounded like they had full intent of creating warrants for my disks,
virtual or otherwise, we're going to be made. Thankfully, they're leaning on
an accepting a signed affidavit that states I deleted the emails. All because
_they_ sent me the wrong info. It feels very much like a combination of
gaslighting and extortion.

FOIA is a strange, strange thing..

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trendia
On what grounds could they get a warrant? They made the mistake, not you.

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duxup
Possibly the emails contain information that could harm a third party? In that
case they would maybe have an incentive to investigate and be sure that the
information was destroyed.

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throwaway76543
I think he's asking what grounds authorities might have to demand destruction
of the information.

Is there a legal pretext for going after information like this?

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cwkoss
Could the feds POST a confidential JSON blob to an arbitrary server to obtain
a warrant to inspect that server's hard drive?

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anitil
Have you ever considered the fact that you might be a genius? An evil genius
for sure, but still.

~~~
cwkoss
I enjoy thinking about how to break systems. >:)

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jaclaz
If I am allowed to go a bit side-ways, I am curious to ask what is other HN
members' opinion on the writing style of the article.

I find it particularly difficult to follow, jumping from "history" to
"anecdata" then to "data", back to "particular history", then a note or two
about the actual request, then again some "law history", then something about
the actual response obtained, etc., and again back to "history", mixing in all
of this some "opinions", and back to "anecdata", some attempt to "humour",
back to "history".

Is it just me, or is it objectively "confusing"?

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anitil
I don't know about 'objectively' but I'd say the mix of the author's story
along with the ex-black panther story was slightly off. It seemed like two
stories with vastly different weights ('I was interested in this thing' vs 'I
was tracked by the FBI for years').

And the paragraph about the 'Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo' sort of went
nowhere - I actually had to go back and try work out why it was there.

But I'm not a journalist or an editor so could just be wrong

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gravypod
What is the scope of the FOIA? If the government hires a contractor to do
something and the contractor delivers it to the government are you able to
FOIA the information the government has on this product? Can you request
records from the company?

~~~
murphysbooks
NASA has a nice summary of the rights the government has to contractor created
works.[1]

A contractor may claim copyrights, but the government still has a license to
the work that allows them under most circumstances to do anything they please
(for the public good) with the work (e.g. publish it in the New York Times)
and also release copies for reproduction (as long as you reproduce the copy
you got directly from the government).

The general counsel of any agency can explain what the agency's rights are for
any given work.

[1]
[https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/531751main_Government%20Data%20Righ...](https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/531751main_Government%20Data%20Rights%20Under%20the%20FAR%20\(2003\).pdf)

