Show of Hands

Political stonewalling, clearly.

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.

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

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.