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June 2019
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Interior Department Putting Even More Effort Into Dodging FOIA Request

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The Department of the Interior is still trying to remove the word "freedom" from "Freedom of Information Act." The first step is removing the word "information."Earlier this year, the DOI tried to sneak past a rewrite of FOIA by hiding a request in the federal register. It would only apply to the DOI, hence the lack of legislative noise or heads up to the public. Under the guise of "ensuring compliance" with the law, the DOI wanted the power to unilaterally reject any request it found "burdensome."Faced with an influx of requests, the DOI decided to double down on non-compliance. Rather than route more staff to the overburdened FOIA response team, the DOI decided it would be better served by tossing as many requests in the trashcan as possible.A few months have passed, but the Interior Department's attitude towards transparency hasn't improved. In fact, it's gotten worse. The DOI's best and brightest continue to work tirelessly towards ensuring as little information is freed as is humanly possible. Roll Call, which first exposed this underhanded tactic in May, has more details on the DOI's flagrant disregard for FOIA's statutory requirements.

Documents sought under the Freedom of Information Act were withheld by the Interior Department under a practice that allowed political appointees to review the requests, internal emails and memos show.The policy allowed high-ranking officials to screen documents sought by news organizations, advocacy groups and whistleblowers, including files set to be released under court deadlines. In some cases, the documents’ release was merely delayed. In other cases, documents were withheld after the reviews.
The department's spokesperson confirmed the new review procedure's existence while pointing out officials were under no obligation to release documents after review. Furthermore, the spokesperson asserted that any suggestion there's an "affirmative response requirement" following review is "driven by political motives." In other words, the suggestion the DOI might be dodging its FOIA obligations is just some sort of partisan slur.Wonderful. Even FOIA has been politicized under this administration, which views government transparency with considerable side eye, considering many requests originate from members of the Fake News Media™.But persistent requesters have managed to pry loose some documents from the close-fisted DOI. And those documents show staff and officials thwarting internal processes and removing hundreds of pages of responsive documents before turning them over to requesters.
After Joel Clement, a whistleblower, sued the department under FOIA to release records about being reassigned from his post, Interior Communications Director Laura Rigas interceded. Career FOIA officials in March 2018 identified 1,558 pages of “responsive” documents it planned to release — a number that was eventually pared down to just 49 after the review process.“I have concerns about items in here [redacted],” Rigas said to Ryan McQuighan, a career records official.
Unfortunately, these internal communications are heavily-redacted so it's unclear what legal justifications -- if any -- DOI officials are using to keep documents away from requesters. What's on display here suggests DOI officials are more interested in protecting themselves than following the letter of the law. There are multiple exemptions the government may use to justify withholding information, but the requesters' (or requestees') political interests or motivations aren't among the exemptions.But that seems to be what's happening. Requests by whistleblowers and environmental activists seem to be the ones most frequently targeted for official review -- at least according to the communications obtained by Earthjustice via a FOIA lawsuit.Although this isn't how FOIA is supposed to work, this is how FOIA actually works. Government agencies are obligated to respond within a certain period of time and hand over responsive documents. In reality, the timetable is often extended indefinitely and documents are routinely withheld to prevent bad press over departmental embarrassment. The DOI is just doing what's become routine at federal agencies -- only it's doing it with a bit more attitude than most, not-so-subtly letting requesters know their chances of getting what they asked for are incredibly slim.

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posted at: 12:00am on 25-Jun-2019
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If China Is A Glimpse Of Our Future Surveillance Nightmare, Maybe Hong Kong Shows How To Fight It

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Techdirt has been covering the roll-out of the extraordinarily comprehensive digital surveillance systems in China for many years. It's hardly news that the Chinese authorities continue to deploy the latest technologies in order to bolster their control. Many of the same approaches to surveillance are being tried in the special administrative region of Hong Kong. A British colony for 156 years, it was handed back to China in 1997 on the understanding that there would be "one country, two systems": Hong Kong would be part of China, but it would retain its very different economic and administrative systems for at least 50 years.Well, that was the theory. In practice, Xi Jinping is clearly unwilling to wait that long, and has been asserting more and more control over Hong Kong and its people. In 2014, this provoked the youth-led "Umbrella Movement", which sought to fight interference by the Chinese authorities in Hong Kong's political system. More recently, there have been even bigger protests over a planned law that would allow extradition from Hong Kong to China. This time, though, there has been an important development. The protesters know they are increasingly under surveillance online and in the street -- and are actively taking counter-measures:

Protesters used only secure digital messaging apps such as Telegram and otherwise went completely analogue in their movements: buying single-ride subway tickets instead of prepaid stored-value cards, forgoing credit cards and mobile payments in favor of cash and taking no selfies or photos of the chaos.They wore face masks to obscure themselves from CCTV, fearing facial-recognition software, and bought fresh pay-as-you-go SIM cards.
As The Washington Post report explains, in addition to minimizing their digital footprints, the protesters also adopted a decentralized approach to organization. The hope is that without clear leaders, it will be harder to shut down the protests by carrying out just a few targeted arrests. The protests are continuing, so it's too early to say how well these measures have worked. Moreover, the level of surveillance in Hong Kong has not yet matched what is happening in Tibet or the huge Western region of China inhabited by the Uyghurs. Nonetheless, the conscious attempts to blunt the force of privacy-hostile digital technologies form an important testing ground for approaches that others may soon need to adopt as China-style total surveillance spreads around the world.Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter, Diaspora, or Mastodon.

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