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PamGH April 4th, 2016 4:06am

FOIA requests to DOJ: time 4 simple request 86% higher than other agencies, complicated request 76% longer, request denials 49% higher, backlog 8,938-96% higher. What do you think is going on in this government department?

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htcbump Florida
04/04/16 9:49 pm

Political stonewalling, clearly.

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anonymousme
04/03/16 11:34 pm

I used to be a FOIA specialist. So, the short answer is that many aspects of criminal information requests are protected from disclosure. Because of this, a good request is very carefully phrased. Then, the response is also carefully reviewed and phrased. Requested documents are redacted as necessary. Now the fun parts - this work is done by a clerk or at best a handful of people, who almost certainly have other assignments. Then reviews are done by legal staff who have bucket loads of other work to do. So, do we hire more people? Are you kidding, Congress barely funds already existing staff. Can we contract the work out? Well, usually yes, but that also costs money.

This scenario is true for pretty much every why-doesn't-the-Government-do-a-better-job scenario you can come up with. Every new requirement is added on top of old requirements. How do you change things? An act of Congress. And we all know how well that works.

This is why I prefer raising goats.

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PamGH SW Washington
04/03/16 11:48 pm

Lol....happy goat herding😀

112112321 pleb
04/03/16 9:12 pm

I need to learn this fun new language so I can understand what this means
I'll come back to this later

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PamGH SW Washington
04/03/16 10:01 pm

FOIA. Freedom of information act. DOJ Department of Justice 😝

PamGH SW Washington
04/03/16 9:08 pm

It's the backlog that gets me. The higher denial rate maybe, but they should not be so much slower. The public is given the FOIA for a reason and it's not to hide or delay things.