DEA Hands MuckRock a $1.4 Million Estimate For Responsive Documents

An anonymous reader writes with news about what might be the largest Freedom of Information Act fee yet. "The EFF recently kicked off a contest for the 'most outrageous response to a Freedom of Information Act request' and we already have a frontrunner for the first inaugural 'Foilie.' MuckRock's loose confederation of FOIA rabblerousers has been hit with a $1.4 million price tag for John Dyer's request for documents related to the 'localization and capture' of Mexican drug lord 'El Chapo.'"

Comments

Consider the denominator

[mi]

I hate to even appear to be defending a government agency, but the request was for over 13K case files. $1.4mln divided by 13K comes to about $107 per case. If a lawyer has to (carefully) review each one — such as to black-out parts affecting privacy of innocent or other government secrets — the requested fee may even appear too small.

As TFA aknowledges:

This request will have to be narrowed considerably if MuckRock hopes to obtain anything on this subject from the DEA.

Re:Most. Transparent. Administration. Ever.

[ganjadude]

who said anything about the market and civil rights? rand is talking about ending the war on drugs and restoring rights to those convicted of non violent drug charges. That Is what I mean when im talking about civil rights because everyone knows the system is stacked against black people. ending the war on drugs would be the single biggest civil rights gain for many americans out there