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'Freedom of Information, Finally Made Easy' by MuckRock (Video)
The quote in the title is from www.muckrock.com/about/. And that is exactly what MuckRock is all about: Making FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests for you (and investigative reporters) so you don't have to deal with the often-daunting paperwork and runarounds you may run into when you try to pry information out of a recalcitrant government agency. In theory, most government information is public. In practice, many local, state and federal government bodies would just as soon never tell you anything. This is why Tim Lord talked with MuckRock co-founder Michael Morisy, and why we're running this interview in the middle of Sunshine Week, which exists "...to educate the public about the importance of open government and the dangers of excessive and unnecessary secrecy."
But you'll need to send me $6,248 for photocopying and personnel costs first.
Your political party doesn't care about your rights and only represents corporate interests.
There's nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but it does kind of turn this submission into a Slashvertisement.
#DeleteChrome
http://www.alaveteli.org/ is an open source FOIA tool, that can be localized for any country. it's operating on an EU level, and in many EU countries, including UK, Hungary, etc. for an English language adaptation, see: http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/ or http://www.asktheeu.org/
If you're in the UK, check out http://www.whatdotheyknow.com, which does a lot of this for free. Also, they've been setting up lots of international branches of it (an open source project) called 'Alavateli': http://www.alaveteli.org/.
Thanks, Roblimo, for another Slashvertisement. At least the Reddit stories that are paid placement ads have a blue background.
Why even have the "interview" shtick, and a better question - why the hell would a person pay money to some jerkass to file a FOIA claim? They are really easy to file yourself.
Keep this up, Slashdot! Pretty soon you'll be just as credible as a Jimmy Saville endorsed nanny service and have just as many patrons as well.
Michael here from MuckRock. Nobody else does what we do in the US for free. We lick the stamps, send the envelopes, scan the documents when they come back, and help post them. Hundreds of our users and thousands of our visitors find this to be a valuable service, but if you don't want to use us,we make that easy to: We've got thousands of request templates you can copy and paste for your own use, and a public database of agency contacts that's much more comprehensive than anything else we've seen. Any particular concerns we can address, please let me know. But for the record, over the past 3 years, we've spent about $30 on advertising, all on Google AdWords. Wasn't worth it.
Agreed but our government agencies of all caliber, law enforcing or otherwise have such a bad history with coming clean and being honest and open.
I mean "It's the American way" to lie and cheat your way to the top of the pile is a coined phrase regarding our politicians.
Why blame people for the nutty shit they do in response to the absolute insanity of our societies leadership. I know I know, two wrongs don't make a right. Nor are they an accurate means of finding the "truth".
But it doesn't matter if there's aliens on the moon or not. No one has faith or trusts anything anymore. And as far as housing and Census records, well, thats just a price we pay for living socially.
In a purely logical sense, believing anything you hear or see at school, on T.V. or from a politician in this country has been a bad idea (TM) for a long time, including radio, hell H.G. Wells comes to mind even though they sparsely advertised that as a work of fiction. So smart people are left in a perpetual state of dis-belief of everything with the only recourse to dig up evidence for stuff through FOIA or illegitimate means like hacking. And this goes for mildly secret stuff like diplomatic cables, Enron financial records, tax information on Google, etc...
Or 3) They're not lazy, but constant reporting is a gigantic pain in the ass and a time sink.
All that data is public, but someone has to get it for you, since they can't just let you go wandering around AND they have to make sure it doesn't disappear. Even if it isn't in the top secret Black Library, someone has to store it, index it, and then find it when you request it. And all of them are government employees making a fairly high wage. If they are pulling your constant crackpot FOIA requests so you can prove that Area 51 is sponsoring the La Leche League conference for the Virgo Cluster, they aren't doing their other jobs.
Transparency and copying thousands of pages of documents for you isn't free. Even computerized files take effort to manage, albeit not as much as digging up a paper document in a warehouse.
Are you kidding? Slashdot is barely a step above supermarket tabloids as it is. Let's see, today we've had: scam promotion, alien life discovered, religion helps science, and government conspiracy (the story you just read).
Did I say "a step above"? Sorry, I was holding the picture upside down.
The simple truth of the matter is often these documents are not laying around where they can be easily handed out, there are costs involved in time and effort to compile the information being requested, reviewing it for confidential information (peoples names, addresses, SSN's, etc.) so it is often not so much about hiding facts as it is not wanting to deal with the headache of complying with what is so often seen as either a casual inquiry, or some nut case that just wants to stir up trouble.
We pay taxes. The personnel and supplies required for transparency should be paid for from that.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
For old data, it makes sense that it should cost something. For new data, that is stupid. Uploading and indexing that information to something should be SOP now.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"many local, state and federal government bodies would just as soon never tell you anything."
Not true.
1) There isn't a procedure in place
2) To make systems online and available takes time.
3) It cost money to do so.
4) request for information is growing at a very fast rate.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Curiosity can lead to requests without bounds. Even requesting free gold bars might give some people pause because that shit gets heavy, takes up space, and is increasingly hard to protect as you get more of it. Information, while it frequently does take the form of photocopies, is also often considered to be something cheap and easy to reproduce, which of course it is not. There are costs even to preparation of computerized documents considering that, besides the national security angle, there are considerations of privacy as well as formatting. Even redaction that is done in complete compliance with the law, and no with no ulterior motives, will require humans to evaluate each page that is released. Human eyes are expensive, and computers generally cannot do that job perfectly (yet).
Of course, while there is a process to weed out frivolous requests, it is a process that frequently gets criticized, rightfully or wrongly, when it is employed.
So, ultimately, it is an expense that can grow all out of proportion to the amount of taxes paid. Taxes pay for a lot, and you might argue that this is something that needs to be paid for as opposed to , but even if it was, the cost could still grow out of proportion.
Because taxes are magical.
We don't want to pay more in taxes, but we demand you add these new line items. herp derp.
We pay taxes for existing budget, want to add billion dollar systems to make everything online all at one? need more revenues. i.e. higher taxes.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
No. Sorry, but system don't magical change themselves to add new features.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
No. Sorry, but system don't magical change themselves to add new features.
Funny, I don't remember you always being a giant douchebag.
By now there is no excuse for new records to not be computerized, whatsoever.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
We don't want MORE taxes. We want the existing taxes to be spent more appropriately/intelligently. Do that, and suddenly you have the budget to do the things that should be done. Of course, good luck making that happen. But that's why they call this a discussion.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...