FBI Will Revert To Using Fax Machines, Snail Mail For FOIA Requests (dailydot.com)

blottsie writes: Starting next month, the FBI will no longer accept Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests via email. Instead, the U.S. agency will largely require requests be made via fax machine or the U.S. Postal Service. [The FBI will also accept a small number of requests via an online portal, "provided users agree to a terms-of-service agreement and are willing to provide the FBI with personal information, including a phone number and physical address."] The Daily Dot reports: "It's a huge step backwards for the FBI to switch from a proven, ubiquitous, user-friendly technology like email to a portal that has consistently shown problems, ranging from restricting how often citizens can access their right to government oversight to legitimate privacy concerns," says Michael Morisy, co-founder of MuckRock, a nonprofit that has helped people file over 28,271 public records requests at more than 6,690 state, federal, and local agencies. "Given that email has worked well for millions of requests over the years, this seems like a move designed to reduce participation and transparency, and we hope that the FBI will reverse course," Morisy added.

Comments

google should adopt this

[someone1234]

for dmca takedown notices :D

Re:google should adopt this

[Anonymous Coward]

Great idea!

Re:google should adopt this

[DickBreath]

How far can such stalling and obfuscating be stretched? What are the limits?
An inspirational example is below. But one thing it makes clear. Our country is deeply divided. Not just two toxic political parties bitterly fighting (through the people who support each), but also how the government (which is made of people) are divided against the citizens. Also how the divide between rich and poor is increasing. Neither side in any of these divisions even makes a pretense of playing fair, clean or by the rules anymore. But now the example of obfuscating . . .


“But the plans were on display”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Re:google should adopt this

[AmiMoJo]

Noooo, the MAFIAA will cut down every forest in the land just to send their billions of take-down notices a year! You will end up like Easter Island!

Re:google should adopt this

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly I tend to think the driving force of all the division is what I've come to call "the clicks". They've got to do everything to get the clicks. The media, none of it, even remotely pretends to present things in a fair and impartial light. They spin everything as much as they can and make headlines as inflammatory as possible to try to get the clicks. And whether you want to admit it or not, the media has a huge influence on everybody. They fundamentally set the mood of everything. And since they've decided that the clicks are more important than providing fair level headed articles, and riling people up is the best way to get the clicks, we end up with the atmosphere we have. Everybody is divided based on if they agree or disagree with the headlines.

The part that annoys me the most is how the media seems to staunchly refuse to accept their responsibility in most of this. As far as I can tell, CNN elected Trump, but they'll refuse it staunchly. They spent years covering every little terrorist attack and making things that really weren't that big of a deal all you heard about because it got them the clicks. This created a sense of fear which Trump then played to and took advantage of. And now CNN is pissed that he took advantage of something they created and now rather than covering things fairly, they're playing up how awful everything he does is. Note how they don't cover any of the positives he's done, and only the stuff their reader base will be outraged by. Again. For the clicks.

Re:google should adopt this

[TheGratefulNet]

oh wow, that's the funniest thing I've read in a long time!!

but its so marvelously clever, too. it would halt the abuse of dmca since the 'bots' can't really just auto-fax or snail mail so easily.

it will also COST THEM REAL MONEY. and that's just icing on the cake.

Re:google should adopt this

[Anonymous Coward]

They've got to do everything to get the clicks. ~. The part that annoys me the most is how the media seems to staunchly refuse to accept their responsibility in most of this.

It is the reality of the situation. Print media (the ones who used to do investigations and in-depth reporting) is dead. TV news is too short (30 minute programs) and on too long (multiple times a day to 24hrs) to present anything but irrelevant and entertaining one-liner stories.

How did this happen? With print, it was the death of print advertising. Future historians, if they can piece together any records will note that Print died when Craigslist took off. The newspapers failed to see that the print classifieds model was dead and lost that war without a fight. Other print revenue soon followed.

What we are left with is the stupid headline that links to a 30-page slideshow (29x the ads a normal 1-pager would have!). Adblock destroys that model. 30 pages of annoying clicking reduces traffic. Death Spiral continues

Re:google should adopt this

[Big Hairy Ian]

“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”

Ever thought of going into advertising :D (The last bit of the quote you missed off!)

Re:google should adopt this

[geekmux]

Honestly I tend to think the driving force of all the division is what I've come to call "the clicks". They've got to do everything to get the clicks. The media, none of it, even remotely pretends to present things in a fair and impartial light. They spin everything as much as they can and make headlines as inflammatory as possible to try to get the clicks. And whether you want to admit it or not, the media has a huge influence on everybody. They fundamentally set the mood of everything. And since they've decided that the clicks are more important than providing fair level headed articles, and riling people up is the best way to get the clicks, we end up with the atmosphere we have.

If the "atmosphere" we have today is one of bullshit hype and information deemed corrosive at best, then perhaps we need to find a way to stop fucking feeding it. In other words, stop creating and funding revenue streams based on nothing more than "the clicks". Petition to make turning a human into the product illegal. Start to give a shit about privacy again.

Sadly, that will never happen, so our atmosphere will continue to devolve. Capitalism often does not makes sense due to it being perverted by corruption and greed. I can start a tobacco company today and help contribute the the killing of hundreds of thousands of Americans every year (far worse a death toll than anything we're currently rioting in the streets over), but I'll be arrested if I sell marijuana, because it's "harmful".

We we support, is what we ultimately get.

Re:google should adopt this

[Anonymous Coward]

This is no joke. Emails are not necessarily considered a device with which you can perjure yourself, which should be a requirement for any DMCA takedown request, according to the law.

Re:google should adopt this

[DickBreath]

Yes. The media is largely responsible. I remember when CNN was respectable. It was about real news. I watched it deteriorate over decades. They got rid of Headline News. Replaced it with basically gossip and fluff. Stopped doing real analysis. The invasion of the Talking Heads. Sound Bites.

I remember when CNN closed their foreign bureaus. Fired their investigative journalists. At the time, a friend and I wondered how CNN would continue to operate. Now it is clear. Pretend news. Infotainment. It's mostly editorial. Regurgitating government hand outs. The government figured out with 9/11 that it could seize control of the news media with "embedded journalists". They could simultaneously sanitize the war news coverage while also holding the news media hostage to the deliciously addictive handouts of news bits from the government as long as journalists play nice and don't get their access revoked. You can see this today in the white house press briefing room.

Re:google should adopt this

[DickBreath]

I just copy/pasted from somewhere. No deliberate intent to leave off something important. My point was about obfuscation by a government agency.

Re:google should adopt this

[Anonymous Coward]

When was CNN ever objectionable? In the 90s they were known as the Clinton News Network for their lack of probing into anything Clinton did, and asking softball questions. Or we could go back to the first Reagan victory in 1980 where the polls were far off until the last couple of days (just like this election), and the media was stunned at what happened.

Media voted 94% Democrat in 1964. Apparently its slightly less biased now. https://archive.mrc.org/biasbasics/biasbasics3.asp

Re:google should adopt this

[Anonymous Coward]

This is blatant propaganda.

Re:google should adopt this

[jbengt]

Media voted 94% Democrat in 1964.

Everyone voted 94% Democrat in 1964. (Except the South, where a lot of whites were pissed that the Dems were trying to give blacks equal rights, and a lot of blacks couldn't vote.)

Re:google should adopt this

[omnichad]

How far can such stalling and obfuscating be stretched?

That's already being tested with just about every EO issued in the last 3 weeks.

Re:google should adopt this

[Ksevio]

From what I've seen, it's just news without the journalism. I watched one bit where the news casters were literally just describing the video feed from a helicopter about a man in a flooded area. It was just filling up time and didn't tell me anything that I couldn't see just by watching the video.

Re:google should adopt this

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to check that statement and let me know which party was doing what.

Re:google should adopt this

[Dread_ed]

How far can such stalling and obfuscating be stretched? What are the limits?

An inspirational example is below. But one thing it makes clear. Our country is deeply divided. Not just two toxic political parties bitterly fighting (through the people who support each), but also how the government (which is made of people) are divided against the citizens. Also how the divide between rich and poor is increasing. Neither side in any of these divisions even makes a pretense of playing fair, clean or by the rules anymore.

If you took the time to check the voting record for all of your least favorite bills that have become your least favorite laws, you would notice something interesting. The vast majority of them pass with almost universal support from both parties. There are innumerable examples, here are a few: the DMCA, or the Patriot Act, or even the Iraq war, for instance. So, one could surmise that in the most contentious circumstances, in the most trying of times, and under the most intense pressure to defend the rights and lives of Americans, your "bitterly fighting" parties vote unanimously in favor of propositions that lead to evisceration of the constitutional rights of Americans as well as the deaths of the same.

I don't see a bitter fight between ideologically opposed parties. Sure they seem to fight with the tactics and maturity of 5th graders on the playground. But on closer inspection it starts to look more like a WWE match: Full of bravado, grandstanding, shifting alliances, betrayal, and cheating. But ultimately it is scripted and fake from the word go. What I see is a fucking freak show designed to carry idiots away on a wave of emotion, and keep them as far from the truth as possible.

Re:google should adopt this

[Anonymous Coward]

I can start a tobacco company today and help contribute the the killing of hundreds of thousands of Americans every year (far worse a death toll than anything we're currently rioting in the streets over), but I'll be arrested if I sell marijuana, because it's "harmful".

Well, of course. Marijuana has all the dangers of tobacco - and then some. It is a bit worse. (Perhaps much worse, perhaps just a little bit worse, depending on who you believe. But certainly worse.) So if a line is to be drawn somewhere; between tobacco and marijuana certainly is a valid place. If marijuana was legal, you'd be setting up a marijuana company instead of a tobacco company. Killing hundreds of thousands in more amusing ways.

Re:google should adopt this

[Anonymous Coward]

The Market: "We'll pay you $0.05 for every person who views your page."
Media: "What about giving a fair and/or balanced view? What about fact checking? What about not rushing into print with the first half-assed guess we can scramble together, to get a 10 minute advantage over CNN?"
The Market: "That's up to you. All we care about is the views."

You can't blame the media for caring about clicks, because the market is so structured to incentivise that behaviour. It's a perverse incentive, but it's the one we, collectively, have decided to use. So here we are. It's because we decided, way back, that the web should be free at the point of use.

If you don't like it, then subscribe to some paywalled sources. And check their facts and keep them honest.

Re:google should adopt this

[Anonymous Coward]

for dmca takedown notices :D

Don't see why this is marked Funny, it has some validity, lawyers out there insist that a fax is a more 'legal' way of sending information/documents/whatever than email, for whatever reasons...

Re:google should adopt this

[geekmux]

I can start a tobacco company today and help contribute the the killing of hundreds of thousands of Americans every year (far worse a death toll than anything we're currently rioting in the streets over), but I'll be arrested if I sell marijuana, because it's "harmful".

Well, of course. Marijuana has all the dangers of tobacco - and then some. It is a bit worse. (Perhaps much worse, perhaps just a little bit worse, depending on who you believe. But certainly worse.) So if a line is to be drawn somewhere; between tobacco and marijuana certainly is a valid place. If marijuana was legal, you'd be setting up a marijuana company instead of a tobacco company. Killing hundreds of thousands in more amusing ways.

The only "danger" you've managed to demonstrate here is your inability to discern fact from fiction. Otherwise, you wouldn't be making fucking idiotic statements about killing hundreds of thousands in "more amusing ways" with marijuana. I suggest you educate yourself before attempting to speak on this topic again. Perhaps then you'll grasp the fact that marijuana isn't legal because it doesn't harm enough to create the massive revenue streams generated from alternatives like alcohol and tobacco, along with the benefit provided to population control. This is why the products responsible for tens of millions of deaths remain legal.

Re:google should adopt this

[simonreid]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... People change, parties change, labels change. With the Democrats increasingly gaining votes from white collar workers in large cities, and the Republicans picking them up from blue collar rural areas we are in the middle of another big shift - give it 20 years and people would be amazed that you would associate Democrats with the Labour Unions at all!

Re:google should adopt this

[sydbarrett74]

FOADIAF.

deliberate attempt to stall the process

[Anonymous Coward]

Snowden is correct that the enemy is within.

Re:deliberate attempt to stall the process

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't he be the enemy of the (hidden) enemy out to get you? Which would you be? Tuco, Blondie, or Angel Eyes? Note, you don't have an ace up your sleeve. In this case, Snowden was the ace. ;)

Re:deliberate attempt to stall the process

[avandesande]

FOIA requests cost the taxpayer a lot of money to process. I don't there being a small barrier to entry such as the cost of a stamp.

Re:deliberate attempt to stall the process

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not about the cost of the stamp, it's about delay, delay, delay, then mysteriously lose.

Re:deliberate attempt to stall the process

[Anonymous Coward]

No it doesn't. The process is near fully automated. The documents are already heavily edited/blacked-out. Most documents already exist in OCR searchable formats, and newer ones are already electronic. Why? Because the govt and agencies access the same documents for their own ends.

Re:deliberate attempt to stall the process

[Anonymous Coward]

FOIA are paid by the filers under many circumstances. They cost the taxpayer nothing in monetary terms. Meanwhile, in political terms not having FOIA requests completed costs the public far more.

Re:deliberate attempt to stall the process

[sjames]

They're actually increasing the processing cost by not doing it electronically.

Re:deliberate attempt to stall the process

[bfpierce]

The fact that you believe this is 'expensive' is why we have tax policy like we do lol

Re:deliberate attempt to stall the process

[avandesande]

This site estimates a half billion a year. http://www.informationdiet.com...
You are suggesting that every document in government is sitting around in pdf format pre-redacted... really?

Re:deliberate attempt to stall the process

[Anonymous Coward]

The stamp cost isn't the only cost. There's a time cost, in getting to the mailbox. And now there needs to be created a procedure to open, presumably enter data into a system of record, and retain these paper documents. And of course they'll need to hire and train people to do this.

All of these "new" costs are completely unnecessary and unjustifiable from an efficiency or efficacy of governing perspective. In other words, they're adding layers (of money, time, and personnel) with the intent to make the process as inconvenient as possible.

The baldness of it is most galling, but anything goes these days, it appears.

Re:deliberate attempt to stall the process

[avandesande]

What do you think it costs?

Re:deliberate attempt to stall the process

[Altrag]

Depends on your definition of expensive. They have to pay someone to dig up the files (though that shouldn't be TOO costly assuming they keep their files on a network with a reasonable search functionality, which is a fairly reasonable assumption given that they'd want to be able to find shit themselves internally.)

But then they have to pay someone (who has sufficient security clearance, so not some minimum wage tween) to go over the documents word for word and decide what needs to be redacted. And then probably pass that on to one or two other people who also have sufficient clearance to double-check before release.

Add it all up and its probably between a couple hundred to a couple thousand dollars worth of wages, per request, depending on the size of each request. That might be small change compared to the FBI's total budget but it adds up pretty quick when they're having to deal with thousands of such requests each year.

None of that is relevant to the fax vs email debate of course -- those hours need to be spent regardless of how the request arrives -- but its definitely more costly and involved than just typing into a search engine and blindly mailing off the results.

Actually, it will be an improvement

[Anonymous Coward]

The FBI notoriously takes years to act on FOIA requests. They are literally the worst agency at it.

Re:Actually, it will be an improvement

[parkinglot777]

The FBI notoriously takes years to act on FOIA requests. They are literally the worst agency at it.

Well, before they got overwhelmed by email requests, so it took them forever to catch up with all requests. Now they could easily stream line those requests with a bottle neck they created (with a couple lines of fax?). Great improvement I say. :p

Re:Actually, it will be an improvement

[Anonymous Coward]

To old white men, promises are just words and don't mean anything.

Re:Actually, it will be an improvement

[DickBreath]

Consider this possibility. If the FBI didn't have so much internal festering decay and oozing slime that needed some disinfecting sunlight then the FBI might not get so many FOIA requests. Just sayin'

Re:Actually, it will be an improvement

[schwit1]

Responding to FOIA requests is not trivial or inexpensive. If this process change reduces nuisance requests so much the better.

Re:Actually, it will be an improvement

[David_Hart]

The FBI notoriously takes years to act on FOIA requests. They are literally the worst agency at it.

Well, before they got overwhelmed by email requests, so it took them forever to catch up with all requests. Now they could easily stream line those requests with a bottle neck they created (with a couple lines of fax?). Great improvement I say. :p

Oh, and the fax is out of paper.... (grin)

Re:Actually, it will be an improvement

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama was an old white man?

Re:Actually, it will be an improvement

[ls671]

True enough, it must be setup as paper only output as well because it is the only way to implement non-repudiation ;-)

Re: Actually, it will be an improvement

[Anonymous Coward]

He sure as hell acted like one. His skin may have been black, but he most def is apart of the establishment and is in lock step with the old white men in power. Or atleast was.

Re:Actually, it will be an improvement

[Anonymous Coward]

You're acting quite insultingly to the festering decay and oozing slime, there.

Re:Actually, it will be an improvement

[zerocommazero]

Maybe if they worked on the problem thats causing the tons of FOIA request, it would be a better solution?!

Re:Actually, it will be an improvement

[SeaFox]

If this process change reduces nuisance requests so much the better.

Yeah. Damn those annoying citizens wanting information about how they are governed!

This is not surprising

[HangingChad]

After their interference in the last election where the FBI was on the same side of a US election as the GRU, is this any real surprise? The perception it creates is an image of a law enforcement agency that's gone off the rails. Snooping without a warrant and the nearly unchecked expansion of surveillance powers makes me wonder where this country is headed and whether the FBI needs a reboot.

Re:This is not surprising

[Narcocide]

I would say the FBI and the NSA both, at the very least. It is somewhat of a relief to see the CIA disagreeing with them, but not that much of a relief due to how long it took for them to speak up about it and their apparent unwillingness to do anything further than that.

Re:This is not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the GRU? Wikipedia lists three possible USA related abbreviations: Gainsville Regional Utilities, Georgia Regents University and Georgia Rugby Union. Neither fits.

Re: This is not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe next time don't nominate a proven criminal under multiple FBI investigations of you don't want the FBI involved. Not there fault the Democratic candidate couldn't pass a background check for Wal-Mart if they were anyone but a member of a political dynasty.

Re:This is not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Googling "FBI GRU" turned up this piece of text:

The Obama administration imposed sanctions on four officers of the Russian military intelligence agency -- the Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU

Please learn to Google in future instead of Wikipedia.

Re:This is not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Glavnoje Razvedyvatel'noje Upravlenije

Your Wikipedia skills suck.

Re: This is not surprising

[squiggleslash]

If Clinton had been a "proven criminal" she'd have been convicted of something. As it was even congressional investigations by a Republican Congress couldn't pin anything on her. The FBI investigations were because people kept making allegations about her, allegations that in many cases the FBI was obliged to investigate.

I could probably ruin your life by having a group of us continually, for 25 years, make up allegations against you, accusing you of murdering anyone who you have a connection with who's died, pretending that anything that goes wrong that you have a vague relationship to was caused by deliberate actions on your part, looking for cases where standard practices in your industry change over eight years and highlighting cases where you didn't go along, and so on. Eventually you'd end up under multiple investigations.

Clinton was never a great candidate. She believed too strongly she needed the blessing of those in power to gain power, and she was too much of a hawk on issues related to war. But she wasn't the criminal mastermind her critics pretended she was.

Re:This is not surprising

[rmdingler]

The Wiki is strong with this one; the descriptive vocabulary, not so much.

Re:This is not surprising

[Archtech]

The GRU is Russia's Military Intelligence organization. It would obviously have absolutely no interest in American elections, let alone in trying to interfere with them.

Re: This is not surprising

[ChrisMaple]

She used her political power (and I'll presume, dirt she had on other people in power) to quash and subvert investigations. Obama's corrupt Justice Department was never going to indict her no matter how obvious the evidence because Obama himself would have been implicated.

That she made unbelievable gains on futures contracts is documented, that it was used for bribery is obvious but unprovable. Also, there's now a statute of limitations problem with prosecuting that.

The influence peddling evidenced by outrageous speaking fees is also obvious, but nobody's going to squeal. Think omerta.

And then, there's Benghazi. Clear case of treason, and no Democrat is interested.

Re: This is not surprising

[DarkOx]

That fact it never went to trial means she was never cleared. Its pretty plain to most people that she most likely violated federal laws for handling classified documents; but because it never went to trial we can't say she was proven guilty. It remains technically speaking an open question.

How serious an infraction it was, and how likely prosecution would have been successful, what the likely sentences could have been are all questions and largely matters of opinion for which you will find different ones offered by many qualified people who have experiences in those matters.

The Clintons were simply party to many scandals over two long a period to be trust worthy. Some of that perception has to do with a concerted partisan effort to to tie them to things, but its also true most of us even most other politicians don't lead such colorful lives.

She was not a good candidate! That should have been obvious to the big money contributors, it should have obvious to the other politicians that were going to have to back her candidacy, and it should have been obvious to the party. Next you have all the evidence that the DNC deliberately scudded the Sanders campaign, a man who did not have all of Clinton's liabilities.

I can think of only two reasons to go forward with HRC in the begging (IE when the RNC field was still 12+ people of varied quality)

1) Usually the incumbent party looses the White House after a two term presidency. So she was always secretly a throw away candidate, it was consider by many to be her turn, and backing her got her out of the way so she would not be around for a 202[04] election they more likely could win.

2) She really had enough friends and dirt on people to force them to cooperate.

Re: This is not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

The courts aren't really up to speed on these alternate reality crimes. Since HC hasn't committed any real reality crimes I don't see why the FBI should take a position in the election.

Re: This is not surprising

[serviscope_minor]

And then, there's Benghazi. Clear case of treason,

Well it's clear that you're desperate for there to be something terribly wrong with Clinton and you won't let facts get in the way. This is the weird thing about Trumpanzees: so many of them can't actually cine up with reasons why trump is good instead inventive reasons why the opposite choice was worse. I've never seen the case where so many people are so rabidly in favor of someone they can't say anything positive about.

Re: This is not surprising

[kilfarsnar]

And then, there's Benghazi. Clear case of treason, and no Democrat is interested.

But the Republicans were interested! How many hearings and investigations did they carry out? No, seriously, I'm asking. I lost count. And what did they find? Nothing. So what are you talking about?

Re: This is not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

4 people died in benghazi. More than that were killed by toddlers with guns last MONTH. I don't hear you railing about that particular danger. fucking get over it.

Re: This is not surprising

[Dragonslicer]

And then, there's Benghazi. Clear case of treason, and no Democrat is interested.

If it was such a clear case of treason, wouldn't you expect that a Republican-controlled Congress would figure that out during their investigation?

Re:This is not surprising

[dbIII]

In an ideal world yes. In this one they have form messing about with European elections and the Copenhagen climate conference. Then there were the press releases you are not mentioning from the CIA telling us that they think (or if you prefer, want us to think) that Russians were taking deliberate actions in an attempt to influence the current election. That should be taken into consideration whether the press releases were informing of us of fact or even if it was outright lies.

Re:This is not surprising

[phayes]

Snort. The GRU has precisely the interest that Putin says it does & Putin clearly had an interest in screwing with the U.S.

Re:This is not surprising

[fustakrakich]

It's the voters that need a reboot. Look at the kinds of people they're electing.

Re: This is not surprising

[The Snowman]

And then, there's Benghazi. Clear case of treason, and no Democrat is interested.

Clinton clearly dropped the ball with Benghazi. Her negligence had fatal consequences, and her apology did not sound sincere. However, I would not call what she did "treason:"

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

Source: The Constitution of the United States: Article III, Section 3.

She was negligent and failed either to provide additional support for the consulate or authorize their withdrawal to a safer location. She did not levy war against the United States, nor did she adhere to or provide aid and comfort to an enemy of the United States. She was a spineless coward who clearly did not respect her subordinates or value their lives: but she did not commit the crime of treason. I think in general some people throw that word around a little too loosely without understanding what it means.

Re: This is not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop fucking whining.

Re: This is not surprising

[dbIII]

She used her political power (and I'll presume, dirt she had on other people in power) to quash and subvert investigations

She has zero power now, so where are those investigations?

Clear case of treason

Please elaborate. If Oliver North is not a traitor for giving Hezbolla a large number of classified anti-tank weapons less than a year after they had killed over a hundred US Marines then how is Clinton a traitor?

Re: This is not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

That fact it never went to trial means she was never cleared. Its pretty plain to most people that she most likely violated federal laws for handling classified documents; but because it never went to trial we can't say she was proven guilty.

Posting AC to avoid burning mods.

So what you are saying is that she is not clears, therfore guilty, until there is an actual criminal trial?

So I can accuse you of being a child molester, and until you submit to a trial - you are, because until you go on trial, you are an uncleared child molester.

Where on earth is the law like that? I'm certain you want the law to have people thrown in jail on rumors, but that might take another year or two. Always be careful what you wish for because you might get it.

Also, can you name the specific laws that were violated by her? My own research based on experience, is that the issue raises to the level of a security violation, which in itself is not a criminal act unless accompanied by purposeful disclosure.

But I suspect that you know the specific law she violated. Educate me,

Re: This is not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

She lost! Get over it!

Re: This is not surprising

[AmiMoJo]

And yet, now Trump is president, having promised to put her in jail and now followed through on other even more outrageous and legally dubious promises, she remains free. They aren't even investigating any more.

Re:This is not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

You sweet summer child. Holy fucking shit. Hahahhahaha

Re: This is not surprising

[ScentCone]

And what did they find? Nothing.

No, they found that the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and her boss, Obama, repeatedly, deliberately, and for purely political purposes right before an election where his narrative about terrorists being "on the run" was a central campaign talking point, lied, lied, and lied some more about what happened, why it happened, and how they responded to it. Their were multiple investigations into it because Clinton herself, the State Department, and the rest of the Obama administration were deliberately non-responsive to subpoenas and other requests for information. The Obama administration foot-dragged and slow-walked at every opportunity, and Clinton herself lied and had her associated and staff lie continuosly for months. You think that's "nothing," but what it did was contribute to voters' understanding of just how corrupt she is, and in what contempt she holds the people she wanted power over. Of the many things that cost her the election, her display of deceit and obfuscation over the deaths of people under her on her watch, and her craven attempts to spin a fantasy version of events and cover up what happened was a key part of it. "Nothing," indeed.

Re: This is not surprising

[Thud457]

She lost! Get over it!

We all lost.

And both the Democratic and Republican parties are to blame for not having their goddamned houses in order.

Re: This is not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Absence of a conviction is evidence of corruption?

By that standard, we are all liable to be found guilty.

Re: This is not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

The key to all this was that there weren't any hearings until an obnoxious amount of time had passed. The general reason for that was that the spark for the hearings was information obtained from FOIA requests. Months and years were had to bury evidence in various ways. "What difference does it make", indeed.

Re: This is not surprising

[Calydor]

And if the problem was that they were afraid to do anything with a Democrat President, why hasn't Trump started a new "Real News!" investigation of her? Doesn't Trump want to see justice done?

Re: This is not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

That is your selection bias. They have and express reasons. No, they are not good reasons but they do have some. They don't make sense, no. But they do have some.

Re: This is not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Innocent UNTIL proven guilty. Some haven't heard of this concept. Most people believe it's guilty until proven innocent. Sad.

Re: This is not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

So they voted for Trump.

Re: This is not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

It was over two hundred US Marines.

Re: This is not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

> If Clinton had been a "proven criminal" she'd have been convicted of something.

Which one? Bill gave up his license to practice law and had to settle out of court on those sexual harassment claims. The reason he gave up his license to practice law was in how he hid his sex practices from the court, which were relevant to the hostile workplace claims (e.g. the idea that he expected sex from his interns).

As for Hillary, you seem to think that's over. It might be and it might not be, but a large number of things found about CGI and CF haven't really been investigated. As for the emails, well, they really couldn't charge her with Loretta Lynch there. At most, they could recommend prosecution and she could ignore it, so it simply looks like they cut some kind of backroom deal.

I mean, they only ever got Al Capone for tax evasion in the end. Sure, some of the things the Clintons have been charged with are BS, but do you really think it's coincidence that they're a magnet for so many charges when most of the Democratic party isn't? It's a bit hard to say it's all smoke and no fire, no? We have plenty of emails to know that she wasn't exactly telling us everything. We know there was classified info in there, etc.

Re: This is not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

why is it when people bring up Benghazi the fact that the Republicans in congress cut the security budget for the State department?

Re: This is not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

You lost nothing. Are you a baby that cries every time your chosen team loses? Guess what? The world isn't here for you. Other people have opinions that do not align with wet fish like yourself. That's life. Learn to accept different opinions and experiences, or stay in your mother's basement twittering and dweebing your life away in echo chambers.

Re: This is not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, you're trying to go to "This is bad and influenced the voters" when the accusation was actually, "Clear case of treason" which is rather different.

Nice deflection. It's not like it was hard to spot.

Too bad the actual facts show that Hillary got 3 million more voters than Trump, and that it was mere chance that Trump squeaked his way into an electoral college victory that was minimal. That's right, all of those multiple investigations by the clearly partisan house, all of their hysterical partisan hand-wringing and accusations, all of their exaggerations and obfuscations of the truth, using the deaths of American diplomats, in a craven attempt to spin a fantasy version of events and create some outrage, failed to achieve much at all. The average American voter? Does not care. Never did care. They don't even care about the money being wasted on the bullshit.

That you ignore the initial outrageous claim, and try to make it meaningful anyway, is demonstrating your own delusional character. Which is rather similar to Trump, who created fantasies over his "landslide" and his "massive inauguration turnout" and who has insisted on "illegal voters" being a major influence. Which lead to a wildly abused "executive order" which his lapdogs insisted only impacted a few dozen people, when it was thousands and thousands, and lead to an immediate judicial injunction which the president was so unable to tolerate that he acted as if a judge was not entirely legitimate and acting within the range of his authority.

That isn't even counting his other toddler tantrums, like threatening Chicago with a federal take-over, depriving California of funds, and making a sovereign country pay for a wall that won't even work. Oh, and he's still intent on taking insurance away from 20+ million people.

You have declared your allegiance for a petty bully, a violent and petulant brat, and I doubt you feel the slightest bit nauseated by it. You have long been a supporter of oppression and coercion.

And you try to make pride focused on what was nothing more than an empty, partisan, investigation, that produced nothing more than vapid, vacuous accusations of no substance and meaning, exploiting the deaths of valiant Americans for what?

A Turnip in the Oval Office?

What's the point of selling your integrity for utter incompetence and malignant destructiveness?

Re: This is not surprising

[larkost]

And yet you don't seem to be able to point to a single lie. All of this innuendo, and no facts. If she really did "lie continuously for months", then there would be a clear record of it. At this point it is clear that your position is not about the truth; you have an enemy and you are going to do everything to damage that enemy, even if you have nothing to go on. That is simply prejudice.

Re:This is not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't need a reboot, the need to get the boot! As in booted out of power, and out of the country!

Re: This is not surprising

[DarkOx]

Look I am not going to get drawn into a research project of pointing out specific records handling laws and sub paragraphs for an AC.

Its not the same thing as you calling me a child molester. You're accusation is baseless. In Hillary's case classified documents were found on system they should not be on. That is fact. Now how they got there matters. Did she send them before or after the classification was applied, should she have recognized them as materials that should be classified even if they were no so labeled etc. All that matters as it if she is specifically guilty of violating the law. To say there isn't evidence though is false. It just might not be proof.

To use your example it would be like if there was a kid screaming about how someone just molested them and a whiteness could put me in the general vicinity but could not confirm I was alone with the child. That would be evidence against me, but not proof I did anything wrong. I could not stop people from forming their own conclusions and while I would not like it I would expect and understand some limited action on their part, like not leaving me alone with their kids.

So it is with Hillary, she is a little to connected to a few to many ugly things. So while we don't lock her up, responsible people don't hand her the country to run either.

Re: This is not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding? As someone who disliked BOTH candidates, that's all I see on the other side as well. I never read anything to suggest why Clinton would have been a good candidate. Any criticism of her was swiftly shouted down with how bad Trump is.

Re: This is not surprising

[david_thornley]

Obama's corrupt Justice Department was never going to indict her no matter how obvious the evidence because Obama himself would have been implicated.

Indict her for what? For her to get indicted, she'd have to do something worth being indicted for. She didn't. People who did what she did with classified information have not been criminally prosecuted. Every other thing I've seen her accused of has been a big stretch at best.

The influence peddling evidenced by outrageous speaking fees is also obvious, but nobody's going to squeal.

Would you care to point to something actually illegal? The speaking fees are documented, and presumably an investigation could get evidence as to whether a big speaking fee got access or influence. If anybody has bothered to do such an investigation, I haven't heard of it, which suggests there's no point in doing so because no real wrongdoing would be found.

And then, there's Benghazi. Clear case of treason, and no Democrat is interested.

The Republicans sure were, and Clinton faced a surprisingly large number of Congressional investigations, which found no actual wrongdoing.

Re: This is not surprising

[david_thornley]

That fact it never went to trial means she was never cleared.

In US law, trials are a really crappy way of clearing someone. The defendant should be found not guilty if there's reasonable doubt. Conviction is good evidence that the defendant did it, but acquittal isn't really evidence of anything. Had Clinton faced trial, and been found not guilty. the anti-Clinton brigade would have scoffed at her and how she "got off".

Clinton mishandled classified documents without evidence of intent. Those cases are simply not prosecuted.

The Clintons were simply party to many scandals over two long a period to be trust worthy. Some of that perception has to do with a concerted partisan effort to to tie them to things, but its also true most of us even most other politicians don't lead such colorful lives.

"When there's smoke, there's fire."
"Um, is that your smoke bomb there?"
"Yeah, but there's fire around here, honest."

Next you have all the evidence that the DNC deliberately scudded the Sanders campaign, a man who did not have all of Clinton's liabilities.

What nobody tells me is why the DNC shouldn't favor a candidate. The Democratic Party is a private organization.

My first Presidential election was in 1972, when McGovern had won the nomination in much the same way that Sanders could have. That election left me with long-term unpleasant feelings. I want the DNC to come out with viable candidates.

Also, Sanders had his own liabilities, which were largely left alone because the Republicans weren't interested in stopping him. He's a self-described Socialist. To a lot of Americans, that's somewhere between traitor and fiend from the pit in desirability. He had plenty of liabilities.

Also, despite FBI and foreign meddling, Clinton won the popular vote by nearly three millions votes, and narrowly lost in the Electoral College. That's not doing bad.

Re: This is not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person’s actions, and how similar situations have been handled in the past.

A bit of background: Attorney General Loretta Lynch said she would follow the FBI's recommendation on whether or not to prosecute Clinton. Comey explained via press release how Clinton broke the law, but didn't recommend prosecution. That is why she hasn't been convicted, but her guilt is laid out for everyone to see.

The bit in the quote above about intent is bullshit, she knowingly intended to have her email, which would include classified materials, sent to her private email account. A former CIA director had to get pardoned to avoid charges for having classified files on his home computer. How is that any different than her having classified files on a personal server?

Re: This is not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

so as previous post said, over 100

Re: This is not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

actually it is innocent UNLESS proven guilty. subtle diiference for some but it is important

Re: This is not surprising

[Dread_ed]

Hillary got 3 million more voters than Trump...

Yeah, and the Falcons got more yards than the Patriots. So what?

I'll tell you what. If the democrats hadn't been so willing to vote for so obviously a flawed a candidate as Hillary fucking Clinton we would have Bernie Sanders in office right now.

What's the point of selling your integrity for utter incompetence and malignant destructiveness?

EXACTLY! As far as I am concerned, Democrats elected Trump, not the other way around. You could have run an HIV+ opossum in blackface against Trump and it would have won. Instead you ran the only candidate that could lose to the psycho-cheeto. Thanks democrats.

Re: This is not surprising

[Shane_Optima]

If Clinton had been a "proven criminal" she'd have been convicted of something.

I only skimmed the rest of your post, but this is laughably naive premise to build on. James Clapper was a proven criminal (perjury while under oath before Congress, as revealed by Snowden) and not only was he not arrested, he wasn't even asked to resign.

The sad fact of the matter is white collar crime routinely is not pressed even in the presence of compelling evidence. I've no doubt in my mind whatsoever that both Clinton and Trump have committed multiple felonies in their lifetimes and I don't think Hillary's email server is or was likely to have caused much actual harm in the world, but when you begin your defense by asserting innocence due to a lack of arrest and follow it by saying that because the conservatives have thrown a lot of bullshit at Hillary, that therefore implies that she's innocent... no, just no.

If you don't understand how ridiculous this argument, consider how very similar logic could be used to defend Trump as well. For example, CNN (through Anderson Cooper), The Guardian, The New York Times and countless other news organizations outright lied about the contents of the Pussygate tape. For example, here is Cooper:

âoeYou described kissing women without consent, grabbing their genitals,â said CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. âoeThat is sexual assault. You bragged that you have sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that?â

But of course "without consent" is a complete fabrication. He said "they let you do it", just a minute earlier he was discussing how he tried to seduce a woman "and failed. I admit it.", and he also said a not-entirely-clear line about magnetism that was clearly intended to mean "women are just attracted to me."

THEREFORE, TRUMP DID NOT EVER COMMIT THE CRIME OF SEXUAL ASSAULT! Well, no, sorry it doesn't work like that. Just because the mainstream media tried to lie about the tape doesn't mean that his multiple accusers are all lying.

Re: This is not surprising

[Altrag]

Its called "Alternative Facts" these days. Get with the times!

Re: This is not surprising

[kilfarsnar]

And what did they find? Nothing.

No, they found that the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and her boss, Obama, repeatedly, deliberately, and for purely political purposes right before an election where his narrative about terrorists being "on the run" was a central campaign talking point, lied, lied, and lied some more about what happened, why it happened, and how they responded to it. Their were multiple investigations into it because Clinton herself, the State Department, and the rest of the Obama administration were deliberately non-responsive to subpoenas and other requests for information. The Obama administration foot-dragged and slow-walked at every opportunity, and Clinton herself lied and had her associated and staff lie continuosly for months. You think that's "nothing," but what it did was contribute to voters' understanding of just how corrupt she is, and in what contempt she holds the people she wanted power over. Of the many things that cost her the election, her display of deceit and obfuscation over the deaths of people under her on her watch, and her craven attempts to spin a fantasy version of events and cover up what happened was a key part of it. "Nothing," indeed.

If all that is true, you should be more upset with the republicans in Congress for not prosecuting perjury and enforcing their own subpoenas. You're upset about how Clinton lied, lied and lied some more, yet you say nothing about how the Republicans did nothing about it.

Or maybe there's just not that much to it.

Re: This is not surprising

[guises]

She was not a good candidate! That should have been obvious to the big money contributors, it should have obvious to the other politicians that were going to have to back her candidacy, and it should have been obvious to the party.

If you're genuinely confused about all of this: everything that you've said regarding her eligibility as candidate is a negative, you've considered none of the positive reasons why the DNC / contributors / others would consider her to be a good candidate. She checks most of the classic political boxes, in another era not so long ago she would have made a very fine candidate based on her positive qualities - enough to overcome any of the negatives or perceived negatives that you mention.

Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be how it works anymore and the DNC hasn't caught on to that yet.

Better than the Obama admin IGNORING them

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama had the worst FOIA request number of any administration.

"Most transparent administration ever!" my ass.

Pine away. I'm LMAO.

Re: Better than the Obama admin IGNORING them

[Anonymous Coward]

Worse request numbers seems to indicate people weren't requesting. Do you mean worse reply numbers? If so, maybe that's due to massive volume?

Very common legal requirement

[jfdavis668]

Faxes are considered legal documents. Emails are a very gray area. Japan is one place where faxes are still serious business machines for this very issue. Physical signatures with point to point delivery and receipt verification are often required to close a legal business transaction. Emails don't provide that proof.

Re:Very common legal requirement

[ravenshrike]

Bingo. Also, while it may reduce participation, it increases transparency as it forces those doing the requesting to be much more transparent about their location and who they are. Not to mention if you're too lazy to run down to Kinko's to send off a FOIA request you should fuck right off.

Re:Very common legal requirement

[Zaphon]

I was about to say just this. This increases transparency.

Re:Very common legal requirement

[Anonymous Coward]

People can just get a service like MyFax and then sending / receiving faxes is as easy as sending an online email. Not really a terrible burden there, especially when there are multiple free eFax services available.

Re:Very common legal requirement

[Anonymous Coward]

Faxes are considered legal documents. Emails are a very gray area. Japan is one place where faxes are still serious business machines for this very issue. Physical signatures with point to point delivery and receipt verification are often required to close a legal business transaction. Emails don't provide that proof.

That may or may not be the legal standard, but it would be dumb. What's the difference between taking a Word document and e-mailing it, and taking a Word document and doing a print-to-fax? Signatures-on-paper are also non-sense: you can have a JPEG/PNG/TIFF of a signature and drop it into a Word document as an image, and how would the receiving side know?

And AFAICT, fax receipts do not meet legal requirements for delivery guarantees (at least in some jurisdictions):

* http://www.justanswer.com/law/5b2vg-fax-confirmation-receipt-enough-prove-fax-received-turned-30-da.html

I was under the impression that fax could not guarantee delivery, but Telex machines could.

Re:Very common legal requirement

[Anonymous Coward]

Bingo. Also, while it may reduce participation, it increases transparency as it forces those doing the requesting to be much more transparent about their location and who they are.

Still, you do banking via electronic media. What a lame excuse.

Re:Very common legal requirement

[Ramze]

It's a curious line to draw -- b/c I have personal experience with using fax machines at a very well known international bank, and almost everywhere I've worked has had fax lines digitally tied to e-mail. I can send and receive faxes from my work e-mail in Outlook. I can also ask a customer to scan their document and attach it to any of dozens of free web-based fax services and e-mail to fax services. The line between fax and e-mail is already blurred to where they're nearly indistinguishable. Both fax lines and e-mail are considered insecure methods of transferring important documents with SSNs, account numbers, and private, confidential information. Even secure fax lines are iffy.

E-mail can include digitally signed signatures in PDF files that are legally binding, but a fax machine's copy can't. A fax isn't even considered a certified true copy as that requires a loan officer, notary, or other official to endorse it (often in the presence of the signer and/or the original copy.) Legally, a fax is about the same as photocopying something and mailing it. The signatures aren't valid if not certified true, and they can be altered or copy/pasted before sending.

The PDF digital/online signature is legally binding. There are other ways to authorize things, though... verbally, through account verification, etc. But, no way is a fax any better than an e-mail. Incoming/outgoing fax numbers can be spoofed just like e-mail addresses - you just might have phone records to back things up which are easier to obtain than e-mail records, but... what good is it if there's no legally binding signature?

Re:Very common legal requirement

[The-Ixian]

Wait... faxes aren't electronic media?

Just because a fax *can* be printed out to paper at the receiving end or may be scanned from paper at the sending end doesn't mean that either end is required to use paper.

I would think that most faxes these days are 100% electronic (e-mail to fax or print to fax and vice versa)

Re:Very common legal requirement

[Anonymous Coward]

You do understand that you have to pay processing fees. Electronic payment will tie you to your method of payment - bank, credit card, etc. You're saying that that paper trail is less identifying than a check?

The other way it reduces participation and transparency is when fax numbers are tied up so that they can't receive FOIA requests.

Re:Very common legal requirement

[Jezral]

Here in Denmark, emails are considered legal documents. Doubly so if you digitally sign them with your government provided citizen key.

But from another comment, it seems US does also recognize emails - it's just the FBI that doesn't.

Re:Very common legal requirement

[randallman]

What? It is very easy to spoof a signature (or anything else) on a fax. Signatures are only verifiable in penned ink. Once you digitize it, it's next to useless. Also, that fax is likely travelling unencrypted over the internet like the rest of voice traffic these days (POTS is dead). Unless you're using end-to-end encryption with verified certs, fax is not secure. Man in the middle attacks are very much feasible.

I'm quite disappointed PGP never took off.

Re:Very common legal requirement

[CronoCloud]

[quote]Faxes are considered legal documents. Emails are a very gray area. [/quote]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

[quote]Physical signatures with point to point delivery and receipt verification are often required to close a legal business transaction. Emails don't provide that proof.[/quote]

E-mail most certainly CAN provide that proof.

Re:Very common legal requirement

[randallman]

Kinko's - transparency? Isn't that the opposite of the point you're trying to make? If I don't want people to know who I am, I'll perform my electronic comms through Kinko's or a coffee shop, etc. Is it so hard to require a verifiable name and address? I can do my banking online at home, but FOIA needs to be done over unencrypted fax from Kinko's?

Re:Very common legal requirement

[jfdavis668]

Yes, electronic signatures are defined. The gray area is emails that are not electronically signed.

Re:Very common legal requirement

[nine-times]

That's nonsense. First, as you said, email is a bit of a gray area because case history is not as established as Fax, but that doesn't mean email is insufficient. They'd been accepting emails already, indicating that email was sufficient for this purpose. We're not talking about signed contracts, just a request for information that people have a legal right to access. If there were some particular security issue, they could add some kind of requirement for email requests (e.g. must be submitted in a webform after verifying your email address, or must contain a valid digital signature).

Unless someone can point to some reason why a simple email is insufficient, this seems suspicious. Considering the context of a new administration that seems intent on violating the Constitution, it's very suspicious indeed.

Re:Very common legal requirement

[CronoCloud]

That's not a problem because anyone using e-mail for contracts/legal stuff is going to use digital signatures. One can even set digital signatures as the default in e-mail clients. EVERY e-mail I send is digitally signed.

Re:Very common legal requirement

[Anonymous Coward]

What about email to fax gateways?

Re:Very common legal requirement

[Anonymous Coward]

emails have time stamps, a complete record of their origin and destination, sender(s) and recipient(s), and a unique message ID. Just saying.

Re:Very common legal requirement

[sjames]

One of the dirty secrets out there is that signatures don't ACTUALLY mean much. The minimum cost to analyse a signature for authenticity is about 10K and even then all you will get is an opinion of the liklihood that the signature is authentic.

They are legally assigned a great deal of weight, but that's a fiction.

Re:Very common legal requirement

[sjames]

It has been a very long time since FAX could be considered point to point. Even over a pots line, it has been a long time since it was accomplished by a series of relays connecting copper wire to form a contiguous circuit.

Re:Very common legal requirement

[Anonymous Coward]

FOIA's have no reason for any legal proof. The gov maintains filing records, if you wanna sue them to uphold FOIA, you subpoena their own timing/denial/etc records.
You are a stupid apologist for the police state.

Re:Very common legal requirement

[Anonymous Coward]

Transparent.. bullshit. Kinkos costs money, which means credit cards, and full of cameras.
We should fuck off? You should stop shilling for the state.

Re:Very common legal requirement

[Altrag]

I'm not sure if you're trying to make a sarcastic point but if so, its not coming through too clearly (pun not intended..)

"Transparency" in these contexts typically means that the FBI (or other government organization) be transparent -- the idea being that public is paying for these documents via taxes, so they should be available to the public.

We've tossed on some restrictions for the sake of security (classified, secret, etc documents) that most people generally acknowledge as necessary in order for these organizations to effectively do their jobs, but anything that isn't explicitly classified should be available, and even classified documents should be available after appropriate redacting providing that their release doesn't directly impact the safety of a person or the nation as a whole.

"Transparency" generally isn't thought of in the other direction because its not "me" or "you" or "John Smith" requesting these documents (in principle at least,) its "the public."

Re:Very common legal requirement

[Altrag]

In the same sense that a door lock doesn't ACTUALLY mean much. A dedicated criminal will still manage to find a way into your home, but it goes a long way to preventing crimes of convenience.

Sure your signature probably won't stand up against a professional forger, but for the vast majority of cases it really doesn't have to. In the worst case scenario, if you fall victim to a forgery (or if you're trying to get out of a deal by claiming the signature isn't yours) then there's always the court room available to sort the situation out.

Re:Very common legal requirement

[sjames]

You forgot, it will cost 10K just to have an analyst look at a signature. That may be OK if 100K hangs in the balance, but not so much if $1000 is in dispute.

More to the point though, we most definitely do not use the same kwikset doorknobs for fort knox that we use for our front doors, yet we still ritually sign deals worth millions with the same technology we use to charge a cup of coffee. It's actually much easier to sign a credit slip with a scrawl that will convince the barista or sales person than it is to pick a lock. By the time it's noticed, you're long gone. The tools to pick or bump a lock make intent rather easy to prove before you've even done anything. Possession of a pen shows nothing.

Re:Very common legal requirement

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been trying to get my workplace, a large NHS hospital in the UK, to make that switch for a long time. When I first started work there and found out they used *actual fax machines that printed on paper* I had to struggle not to laugh. That was about ten years ago and I intermittently make suggestions that we should change this ridiculous situation as it's costing us money - we still get any number of spam faxes every week - but no, it's not important enough. I give up. There's no helping those who don't want to be helped.

Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, well.

Activists can always print their requests on stickers and put the stickers on cans of spam and mail the cans in. That has a righteous feel that activists should like.

FOIA joke

[Dunbal]

[redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted][redacted][redacted][redacted][redacted][redacted][redacted][redacted][redacted][redacted] the [redacted][redacted][redacted]in [redacted][redacted][redacted] [redacted][redacted][redacted][redacted][redacted][redacted][redacted] a [redacted][redacted]

What's the use of FOIA requests nowadays anyway. The above is what you're likely to get.

Re:FOIA joke

[Anonymous Coward]

The purpose of the FOIA is to harass federal employees and keep us from doing our damn job, because every single FOIA requesst is treated like a fucking nuclear emergency (per federal law) and must be responded to immediatly, even if the requestor has sent the exam same request before and is deliberately trying to waste time and money. It's a drone, I get it, you hate it. However, there is no damn dath ray on it, or any sort of laser at all, just a camera. Please stop asking.

Re:FOIA joke

[Anonymous Coward]

The purpose of the FOIA is to harass federal employees and keep us from doing our damn job, because every single FOIA requesst is treated like a fucking nuclear emergency (per federal law) and must be responded to immediatly, even if the requestor has sent the exam same request before and is deliberately trying to waste time and money. It's a drone, I get it, you hate it. However, there is no damn dath ray on it, or any sort of laser at all, just a camera. Please stop asking.

LOL as if federal employees actually work. LOL, tell us another one!

Re:FOIA joke

[kilfarsnar]

The purpose of the FOIA is to harass federal employees and keep us from doing our damn job

And what is that job, if not ultimately to serve the public? It sounds like y'all need some people to just reply to FOIA requests. Then it'd be their job.

Re:FOIA joke

[dbIII]

It was kind of fun when some documents where released in PDF format with the redaction placed as a easily removable layer over the top. I forget which government made that mistake.

Re:FOIA joke

[drinkypoo]

The purpose of the FOIA is to harass federal employees and keep us from doing our damn job, because every single FOIA requesst is treated like a fucking nuclear emergency (per federal law) and must be responded to immediatly, even if the requestor has sent the exam same request before and is deliberately trying to waste time and money.

How hard is it to respond to the same FOIA request by email twice? If you find this difficult, perhaps you do not deserve to have a job which you talk about on Slashdot.

Re:FOIA joke

[Calydor]

http://www.cloudscratcher.com/...

Re:FOIA joke

[Anonymous Coward]

The use is that [redacted] tells you clear as day that your so called government doesn't give a single shit about you.
It tels you that they are protecting shit for the sake of secrecy, corruption, war, murder, torture, taxation by force, covering their own ass and avoiding all accountability and embarassment.
The use is that it's telling you that it's time to revolt against them and throw them out, and close the office, permanently, so that the world never has to suffer to government power again.
History tells us that ALL governments will do one thing and one thing only, FAIL and implode or be OBLITERATED by others.
Taking you down with it.
Eliminate the problem, eliminate governments, and never fall down again.

Re:FOIA joke

[Altrag]

Probably almost as hard as responding to it once. They would have to re-do the search in case there are new documents available, and probably review previously-released documents as well in case the redacting needed to be changed (which theoretically should only go in one directly -- removing redacts -- but I seem to recall them being occasionally caught releasing later copies of documents that were more strongly redacted than previous copies, though its hard to necessarily claim its done maliciously when it could simply be two separate people doing the redacting and having differing opinions on what should be hidden.)

Um...

[VorpalRodent]

restricting how often citizens can access their right to government oversight

So now it's my right to be constantly watched by my government? I've always considered it more of a privilege.

I'm just saying - this can be mis-parsed.

Re:Um...

[gtall]

Actually, it is probably a response to getting swamped with email requests for FOIAs. And there's nothing stopping the Chinese, Norks, of Vladimir and his thugs from misusing the service.

Re:Um...

[The-Ixian]

How is it any harder to send a fax? You can do it as easy as sending an e-mail (I am sure there are even e-mail to fax gateways out there)...

I get it, it's an old technology. But so is e-mail.

Re:Um...

[AmiMoJo]

As if Vlad the Putin needs to submit an FOI request to get that information. Ha!

What is more important: Some requests for publicly available, non-classified information by potentially bad actors, or easy access for citizens so that they may keen an eye on their government? I'd say it's worth throwing resources at to keep the email option.

Re:Um...

[Anonymous Coward]

the Chinese, Norks, of Vladimir

What are, those, Jim?

Re:Um...

[TharMonk]

You are absolutely right. Of course, we can only hope that they will actually have more than one incoming line, actually receive the faxes (oops, did another printing error occur,) and all that, and gosh, it's only an extra step from emailing them to email-to-fax-for-a-fee to get the info to them. If you are okay with the government adding even more meaningless hoops to jump through, as long as they are small hoops, let's discuss options.

I have a great idea to even further "improve" things along the same line: Let's have all FOIA requests hand delivered by the driver of a horse and buggy, to a small, unmarked door in a wall. The driver must shove the requests under the door, with his whip, of course, which is hardly any inconvenience, since he's already there.

While we're at it, why don't we improve things just a tad more, by making sure that we have a thriving horse-and-carriage-and-buggy-whip industry, by requiring that any hand-and-whip-delivered FOIA request must also come from a carriage that has driven from California (the only allowable place where FOIA requests can be physically handed to carriage drivers, in the new improved method,) all the way to DC. Naturally, this will eventually lead to an economy of scale, with thousands of requests being given to each carriage rider before they set off, so I'm sure the cost will fall to somewhere near the level of a postage stamp, and, well, really, the cost of a stamp or a fax is only INFINITELY larger than the $0.00 cost of sending an email, so introducing new costs to the public that you are ostensibly serving, is fine, right?

Or is there no advantage whatsoever to the public for making the public jump through more arbitrary hoops than they already do? Do you see the (not even very thin) end of the wedge, yet, or do you still consider this to be a defensible action by a government that claims to be by the people, for the people?

Not a good look

[rmdingler]

So the FBI will essentially restrict public access to public records while the EPA is being boarded up.

The best weapon of a bad government is secrecy, and like most, ours has a history of behaving badly when the curtain is drawn.

Re:Not a good look

[ChrisMaple]

An agency that no longer exists is an agency that can no longer abuse its power.

Re:Not a good look

[kilfarsnar]

An agency that no longer exists is an agency that can no longer abuse its power.

Maybe we should address the abuse of power, rather than throwing up our hands. Or don't you like having clean water to drink?

Re:Not a good look

[Anonymous Coward]

You must not remember the 'good ole' days of acid rain, undrinkable water and air quality so bad that most of the year places like LA were in a constant fog of unbreathable air. Sure, the EPA has overstepped their bounds on occasion, but let's not throw the baby out with the bath water here. I prefer the environment NOT going to shit quite as quickly as it did in the last century when business were to dump whatever, whenever, wherever.

Re:Not a good look

[The-Ixian]

How is fax any more or less restrictive than e-mail?

I am sure that Flowers By Irene are just using a fax to e-mail service anyway so the end result is the same: an e-mail box full of FOIA requests and spam.

Re:Not a good look

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the choice of an agency that should no longer exist, the FBI is a much better choice than the EPA.

At least the EPA does some good.

The FBI is pretty much pure evil.

Re:Not a good look

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do you live that still has clean water?

Re:Not a good look

[Anonymous Coward]

So the FBI will essentially restrict public access to public records while the EPA is being boarded up.

The best weapon of a bad government is secrecy, and like most, ours has a history of behaving badly when the curtain is drawn.

You mean unlike what James Comey did in broad daylight during the presidential campaign?

Re:Not a good look

[david_thornley]

Sorry, I'm missing something here. It never struck me as fantastically difficult to type up a letter, put it in an envelope with address and stamp, and mail it. If I need to have legal proof that I sent something, registered mail works while faxes and email don't.

Re:Not a good look

[rmdingler]

How is fax any more or less restrictive than e-mail?

I still use a fax machine, and prefer it for some forms of document transmission because it is more secure, because it can be used to return signed original documents, and it's transmissions cannot wind up in a spam folder. Many individuals and companies I deal with, though, prefer a scan to email... and some have no fax capability at all. Access to email is pretty much ubiquitous.

I am sure that Flowers By Irene are just using a fax to e-mail service anyway so the end result is the same: an e-mail box full of FOIA requests and spam.

I have no idea how the initial people secure their fax documents, but I have a sneaking suspicion this rule is not being introduced to make citizen access to public records easier to obtain.

Another restrictive tenet of the FOIA is the cost associated with the retrieval and release of public records by our public servants.

Search and Review Rates The categories of personnel that may conduct searches and reviews and the estimated hourly costs based on the average current salary rates (including benefits) for those categories are: Administrative/clerical – $21/hour Professional – $41/hour Executive -- $76/hour Duplication of Records Records shall be duplicated at a rate of $.15 per page.

Re:Not a good look

[rmdingler]

I hear you. I still mail invoices to customers in envelopes with stamps attached, and receive checks in the PO Box in return.

I actually rather enjoy getting some checks mixed in with the all the bills that arrive there.

That said, not that many people do mail the old-fashioned way any more. The people's government should work and communicate in the method most convenient for the people.

Re:Not a good look

[Anonymous Coward]

So when are the FBI and NSA being shut down for their constant criminality?

Re:Not a good look

[kilfarsnar]

Where do you live that still has clean water?

Cambridge, Massachusetts. We drink it right out of the tap.

Fax gateway

[Anonymous Coward]

Which civil liberties organization will be the first to offer a fax gateway to counteract this?

Captcha: ghostly

Set up a not-for-profit FOIA company

[Anonymous Coward]

Couple fax machines. Simple web frontend, then publish the results.

Can charge a nominal fee for expedited requests, accept bitcoin/etc

Re: Set up a not-for-profit FOIA company

[chipperdog]

You're making it too complicated... You just need an email to fax gateway, I have a few setup using HylaFax and iaxmodem

Re: Set up a not-for-profit FOIA company

[Anonymous Coward]

provided users agree to a terms-of-service agreement and are willing to provide the FBI with personal information, including a phone number and physical address

How will you address that

Re: Set up a not-for-profit FOIA company

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies have phones and mailing addresses too.

Think of it like a sort of FOIA request proxy and/or clearinghouse service.

As a bonus, at a certain point, the company will have a substantial enough portion of all government records that they could subcontract to the government directly and service all of the FOIA requests for everyone.

Re: Set up a not-for-profit FOIA company

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that was the original suggestion. I concur.

  "chipperdog" thought it "too complex"; that a gateway would suffice, so I'm curious to how he intends to deal with the details like physical address, and no corporate veil to keep matters from intruding into his personal life.

Re: Set up a not-for-profit FOIA company

[The-Ixian]

If you are requesting information under FOIA, I would think you would want to actually *get* the information you requested.

Just go to a Kinko's and use their address. The information will be send there...

Same as e-mail. You are trusting a corporation (ISP or e-mail service provider) to provide you with a place to receive the requested information.

Re: Set up a not-for-profit FOIA company

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes/no/think you're missing the point: I don't want to "go to Kinkos". It would be nice to go online and submit a request to said hypothetical company. Then, the company makes the info available online. And then --get this-- anyone can have access to the information. Which is better than each person going to Kinko's. Hope this helps.

Where do they go?

[Merk42]

The fax machine on the receiving end is at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard".

Re:Where do they go?

[Big Hairy Ian]

Just wait until they've been recycled as firelighters

Re:Where do they go?

[Anonymous Coward]

They just need to run out of paper rolls. Fax machines went out of fashion because they kept getting spammed with junk adverts for fax machine supplies, resumes from across the world and various pills.

ESIGN Act of 2000. Also UETA in 47 states

[raymorris]

In the US, the federal ESIGN act was passed in 2000, giving digital documents full legal recognition. Wow, it's been seventeen years - it doesn't seem that long.

47 states have adopted the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA), which is similar.

For some types of transactions, one party might be concerned that they can't prove the document hasn't been tampered with, if it's not a cryptographic signature. That can be a legitimate concern, in some types of transactions.

As the DNC learned the hard way a few months ago, many emails have a tamper-proof signature called DKIM automatically applied, so your email may have a signature proving it is legitimate without you even knowing it. I don't see this as an issue the FBI would be concerned with for FOIA requests - I don't think there's a big danger of hackers changing your FOIA requests.

Re:ESIGN Act of 2000. Also UETA in 47 states

[flink]

DKIM authenticates the originating mail server, not the individual user.

Your Attitude...

[RobotRunAmok]

...is why so many Americans have come to have such a low regard for federal workers, and that in turn is what made Trump's pledge to shrink federal government and "drain the swamp" resonate so strongly with voters.

Re:Your Attitude...

[The-Ixian]

Oh, I forgot that cronyism and nepotism aren't swamp-like characteristics...

Re:Your Attitude...

[david_thornley]

...is why so many Americans have come to have such a low regard for federal workers, and that in turn is what made Trump's pledge to shrink federal government and "drain the swamp" resonate so strongly with marks.

FTFY.

Wasn't this announced a year or two ago?

[raymorris]

I seem to remember reading this story a year or two ago. Maybe a year ago they announced ahead of time that they would stop accepting FOIA emails in q1 2017? Maybe it was a different federal agency that made the same announcement?

Re:Wasn't this announced a year or two ago?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it just wasn't a big deal when it happened under Obama.

Re:Wasn't this announced a year or two ago?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it was just another one of raymorris's hyperpartisan fantasies.

Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Too many paid liberal soros shills are attempting to subvert democracy by trying to get information they have no right to.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump! Trump! Trump!

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

and what about the Koch shills on the conservative side?

Better way?

[Pascoea]

Given that email has worked well for millions of requests over the years

There has to be a better way to oversee our government. How much money is expended processing these requests? I'm not saying we need less information about our government, I'm just saying there has to be a better way to get it.

Re:Maybe not that bad?

[Gaygirlie]

I know where I am and that you're all anti-government conspiracy wackos, but maybe just maybe the FBI doesn't want to receive unstructured requests via email and would instead prefer to have them submitted by a web form which can add some structure to the data and useful business logic. Presumably you fax / postal mail them an actual form as well.

There is nothing magical about fax / postal mail that'd prevent you from sending unstructured requests, nor is there anything magical about e-mail preventing you from sending pre-made forms. Moving to fax / snail-mail solves nothing.

Trump will fix that!

[Anonymous Coward]

No more pesky FOIA at all! I mean, if you can't twitter it, it doesn't exist! Can you twitter a FAX?

Thought so.

Re:Trump will fix that!

[sjames]

Now THAT's an idea. A tweet to fax service for FBI FOIA requests.

Just ban all email within the FBI

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like they don't want to people who pay their salaries to know what is going on. Let them have a taste of their own medicine.

FBI to FOIA requesters: "Who wants to know?"

[duckintheface]

The FBI is asking for irrelevant information. It does not matter who wants to know. What matters is that the operations of government are transparent to everyone. I want to ask the FBI the question they always ask when they are seeking information from people who are suspicious of their motives. "What is your problem with answering our questions... unless you have something to hide?" (This line should be delivered with an arrogant leer)

Re: FBI to FOIA requesters: "Who wants to know?"

[radiumsoup]

Except that due to the nature of classified information the FBI handles on a routine basis, they often actually DO have things to hide, and legitimately so.

MAGA

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump! Trump! Trump!

I think they are banking on the fact

[Anonymous Coward]

That most people are too lazy to do either of those things, and judging by the comments here, they are right. No one is obfuscating anything. Even poor people with no internet access can mail a letter. You can send a fax from your phone or computer. Well done in yet again proving that society's milignment of you is factually accurate, millennials.

and the FAX Machine will

[Anonymous Coward]

be hidden away in the deepest, darkest, dankest basement of an office that is visited only once a leap year on 29th Feb.
The machine will only be allocated one roll of fax paper per 4 years.

The result is that the Director of the FBI will say to El Trumpo, "we are compliant with your FOIA Dicktat your holiness. What is your next task?"

"Well slaves, time to take down the Democrat supporting internet. Make it so"

"It shall be done Oh great Dictator".

It's a lot easier to "lose" a fax...

[thomn8r]

..and they won't be machine-searchable

Re:It's a lot easier to "lose" a fax...

[Anonymous Coward]

See TROVE at Australian National Library.
The principle is to scan documents or faxes back to cross-indexed and searchable text.
Google does something similar..

Interesting thing, is in Australia the government is falsely demanding money back via automated emails.
The COUNTERMEASURE is to reply back by fax or snail mail with NO email or phone number.
Then we have the problem of politicians using snapchat and the like to cover their tracks- beat the archive requirements.
 

Re:It's a lot easier to "lose" a fax...

[avandesande]

Like sending an email is proof of receipt? If you want a record you sent something send it by registered mail. Really I can't believe the accepted emails in the first place.

Re:It's a lot easier to "lose" a fax...

[Rick Schumann]

Here's what you do: You don't bother with FAX at all. You send it registered mail, return receipt requested, or you send it FedEx next-day delivery. That way someone at the FBI has to sign for it; you'll have proof it was sent and received and who received it, that will stand up in court.

Re:It's a lot easier to "lose" a fax...

[Anonymous Coward]

Registered mail doesn't guarantee anything when the receiver uses PO boxes. You've obviously never dealt with the IRS beyond the most basics then.

Re:It's a lot easier to "lose" a fax...

[Anonymous Coward]

Like sending an email is proof of receipt? If you want a record you sent something send it by registered mail. Really I can't believe the accepted emails in the first place.

Yes. SMTP uses TCP ports 25 or 465. The recipient literally sends an Acknowledgement of reception.

Common knowledge to people that aren't ignorant of technology.

Re:It's a lot easier to "lose" a fax...

[Bob the Super Hamste]

You send it registered mail, return receipt requested, or you send it FedEx next-day delivery.

For any legal paperwork this is just good advice. Used registered mail with return receipt a number of times when dealing with a debt collector who screwed the pooch and when dealing with an insurance company that didn't want to pay full market value for a totaled car. Not only does it prevent them from lying about not getting things (which they will do) but it also tends to send a very strong message that you mean business and they better quit fucking around.

Julian Assange, du bist kein berliner!

[Anonymous Coward]

just CC: Russia.
See how many of them get responses. And from whom.

Shut down the FBI. It's Our Only Hope.

[Anonymous Coward]

There has to be a better way to oversee our government. How much money is expended processing these requests?

There is. Now that our secret police have helped Russia interfere with a presidential election, disband the secret police force. No FBI, no opportunity for this kind of abuse. They've shown their unreliability, their propensity for blackmailing public officials since J. Edgar Hoover's time. What are we waiting for? Fear of the bad terrorist? Oh no, they might kill me ... oh wait, I'm much more likely to get hit by lightning, or killed by a car.

Disband the FBI already.

abusive click bait

[Anonymous Coward]

FAX is very accessible. Basically it is an app on a computer or phone just like email. You can have it integrated with your system so a document can be right clicked send fax. I really don't see how this is any more restrictive than email at all.

FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

You can still submit FOI requests through their web portal here - https://efoia.fbi.gov

Re: FBI to FOIA requesters: "Who wants to know?"

[Jaime2]

Due to the nature of humanity, the rest of us also have things to hide. Some are bad but not illegal, like cheating on a partner, some are benign but still secret, like whether or not you are bluffing in a game of poker, and some and simply personal, like what the person looks like naked.

Things the FBI legitimately needs to hide aren't subject to FOIA requests, so the question is still irrelevant. They're going to withhold the information no matter what the answer is.

FUD

[WorkingDead]

You can still submit FOIA requests through their web portal here - https://efoia.fbi.gov/

Avoid generic NSA tapping?

[Roodvlees]

Or do they tap phone lines as well? Meaning they will get all fax messages anyway.

Precedent

[DarthVain]

As I recall when the FBI demanded a website hand over their encryption keys the owner printed it in binary on something like 10,000 pieces of paper... I believe he got in some trouble for that.

However if the FBI is going to only allow FOI requests by fax, well it will certainly open themselves up for some serious abuse when others do likewise and when questioned on it simply point to the FBI itself and say that it seems to be an excepted method for them...

FBI won award for worst FOIA

[raymorris]

'The FBI's reports to Congress show that the Bureau is unable to find any records in response to two-thirds of its incoming FOIA requests on average over the past four years, when the other major government agencies averaged only a 13% "no records" response to public requests.'

https://yro.slashdot.org/story...

Re:FBI won award for worst FOIA

[Anonymous Coward]

From a former president that promised to have the most open government ever. What a liar!

Re:FBI won award for worst FOIA

[Anonymous Coward]

It's very difficult to find records or things that officially did not happen.

Re: FBI to FOIA requesters: "Who wants to know?"

[Anonymous Coward]

the rest of us also have things to hide.

Correct. For those unclear on the concept, an alternate word is PRIVACY.

Meh. State uses antiquated tech too.

[RogueWarrior65]

The US State Department STILL requires applications for ITAR export licenses to be submitted using a form system that's a dinosaur from Lotus Notes and uploaded using only Internet Explorer only on Windows.

Hiring freeze? (who is going to process all that?)

[Danathar]

With the hiring freeze in effect in the Federal Government (and it affects contractors as well), WHO is going to stand by, maintain, install, etc all those fax machines? (unless it's just a POTS fax portal which sends the fax as a scanned document to an email box..which would be funny!). Also, I'm sure their mail department will love the extra work as well......

Re: FBI to FOIA requesters: "Who wants to know?"

[irving47]

"Honey, where is my super-suit??"
'Why do you want to know??!'

Welcome to fascism

[Anonymous Coward]

Herr Trumpenfuhrer strikes again.

Re: FBI to FOIA requesters: "Who wants to know?"

[Calydor]

Which is a surprise to no one. Of course they can't release every little bit of information they have ever gathered - if they could, it would be directly accessible and searchable online.

But why do they need your name? They should default to "Public knowledge" if they don't know whether they're talking to someone with a security clearance.

Re:FBI to FOIA requesters: "Who wants to know?"

[Nunya666]

The FBI is asking for irrelevant information. It does not matter who wants to know. What matters is that the operations of government are transparent to everyone. I want to ask the FBI the question they always ask when they are seeking information from people who are suspicious of their motives. "What is your problem with answering our questions... unless you have something to hide?" (This line should be delivered with an arrogant leer)

And what if that email request is coming from China or Russia?

Validating the source of the request is perfectly legitimate. It's a shame that they have to take a step backwards, technology-wise, but their reasoning is sound.

Isn't this illegal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't this violate the Paperwork Reduction Act - a FEDERAL LAW - and thus make it illegal to revert back to Fax machines?

Everything old is new again

[Milosch1]

They will also be hosting a PC Anywhere dialup service for those without a fax machine.

Re:FBI to FOIA requesters: "Who wants to know?"

[Anonymous Coward]

That is why it is stupid. People from China can easily fax from an American number just like they can use an American email provider. If that is actually their reasoning the people who provided that option should be fired. It is the same reason I get pissed off at banks for not allowing you to send a scanned PDF, you gotta send them a fax about half the time now. Bigger banks have understood this for a while, the smaller shops still want you to fax a bank letter of guarantee if you're gonna buy say a million dollar car.

The reality is that we need a modern day notary system that verifies the identity of both parties before allowing them to exchange information. The problem is, who do you trust to perform this activity? In the modern era trust is at a premium. The FBI doing this only erodes the public trust even further as they have shown time and time again that they will abuse their authority when given it. Worth noting that not all FBI agents will abuse their authority, there are quite a lot of good agents out there I have known over the years. This hurts their reputation despite their hard work as it allows the people misbehaving to hide which makes them all look guilty.

Re:FBI to FOIA requesters: "Who wants to know?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh they think it's *highly* relevant.
They want to know who's been asking questions. Questioning them is treason, after all. Get your name, your address, and they now know precisely who needs to be harrassed and "warned" properly.

Guaranteed they won't be using fax and snail-mail to add your information to the no-fly list.

Republican way of life

[Anonymous Coward]

Q. How do you increase car MPG?
A. Increase the size of gallon

Q. How do you mitigate global warming and improve environment
A. Shutdown EPA

Q. How do you prevent animal cruelty
A. Stop publishing animal cruelty complaints and investigation on USDA website

Q. How do you prevent crime
A. Make it harder for people to complain

Q. How do you lie and get away with it?
A. Call them alternate facts.

Welcome to the era of less transparency

[Rick Schumann]

Funny that I'd see a news story about this today, when I was thinking on the way in to work that we look to be entering an era (hopefully not more than 4 years long!) of less transparency in our government, and more secrecy. I'm not even going to begin to try to speculate on what could happen next, except that it's probably not going to be good for the average American citizen, especially if you're not white, but even us white folks will be affected.

Re: FBI to FOIA requesters: "Who wants to know?"

[flink]

Someone with a clearance and a need to know would not come in through a FOIA request. The claim that the GP made: "Except that due to the nature of classified information the FBI handles on a routine basis, they often actually DO have things to hide, and legitimately so.", is ludicrous on its face as a justification gathering identifying information on requesters. If it's fit to release as a FOIA response, it is fit to print on the front page of the New York Times, end of story.

Re:FBI to FOIA requesters: "Who wants to know?"

[flink]

And what if that email request is coming from China or Russia?

Validating the source of the request is perfectly legitimate. It's a shame that they have to take a step backwards, technology-wise, but their reasoning is sound.

Their reasoning is not sound. FOIA responses are public record. Meaning the person who receives the information can turn around and publish it online or print it in the paper.

Do you think a foreign government would be incapable of recruiting an American citizen to make requests and deliver the responses to them? Of course not. But why would they bother? Anything the USG cares so little about that they don't redact from a FOIA response and has any strategic value whatsoever has already probably long been known by competent intel agencies the world over.

Is anyone actually surprised?

[ilsaloving]

Trump is effectively destroying the little gov't transparency that the US had.

This is just is just more of the same. If they could legally eliminate FOIA entirely, they would. In the mean time, they'll just have to make things more difficult for people, not to mention make it easier for requests to go missing without a track record when someone wants to learn something inconvenient to the gov't.

And if the server authenticates the user (not open

[raymorris]

True, DKIM authenticates the server. Most servers, in turn, authenticate the sender of outgoing mail.

So in the entertaining example of the DNC, we have the DNC's server, itself cryptographically authenticated, attesting that Donna Brazile sent those messages, using her password. Theoretically yes, the DNC's own server *could* be lying. Or else a politician is lying.

Re: FBI to FOIA requesters: "Who wants to know?"

[FatdogHaiku]

In Michigan and Wisconsin, adultery is a felony. In other states it may be a misdemeanor. And yes I know cheating on a partner is not always equal to adultery... well maybe it is in North Carolina, where adultery is when two people "lewdly and lasciviously associate."
http://www.freep.com/story/life/family/2014/04/17/in-which-states-is-cheating-on-your-spouse-illegal/28936155/
I do agree there are legitimate needs to hide some info. And you are spot on with your conclusion.

Re: FBI to FOIA requesters: "Who wants to know?"

[Anonymous Coward]

"and legitimately so."

Not really. Please provide one decent example of why the government needs to do things in secret of its citizens.

Security Improvement

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone is jumping on the FBI as doing this to hurt everyone, but there are pros to not accepting emails. Emails do contain viruses and malware as well as social attacks. Switching to only faxes and paper mail greatly reduces their attack surface.

It's the way you tell em

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the delivery that makes it hilarious

Re: FBI to FOIA requesters: "Who wants to know?"

[dgatwood]

That isn't necessarily true. A FOIA request can potentially return information about people not associated with the collection of that data. On the whole, such personal information is supposed to be scrubbed in response to a FOIA request, but need not be scrubbed if the person requesting it is the person that the information is about.

Additionally, the response to the FOIA request could potentially contain information that makes people look bad when presented out of context. Partial disclosure of that information could cause irreparable harm, and the person harmed arguably has a right to know who disclosed that information so that they can take legal action. That isn't possible if nobody knows who filed the FOIA request.

Fax modems?

[martinX]

What's the problem. We all have fax modems don't we?

Re: FBI to FOIA requesters: "Who wants to know?"

[david_thornley]

In Minnesota, adultery is defined as a married woman having sex with someone (the law might say some man) who is not her husband. I suspect that if anyone actually tried to use that statute on someone it would be tossed out.

Re:And if the server authenticates the user (not o

[PlusFiveTroll]

>>Most servers, in turn, authenticate the sender of outgoing mail.

They do no such thing. They authenticate the 'username' and 'password' of an account. The sender could be anyone with that persons username, almost anywhere in the world. The amount of account compromises and password breaches we see every year pretty much guarantee that anyone who wants a 'fake' email can get one.

We can't outwit a fax tone?

[Pabugs]

Who has the most FAX machines? Rural areas, know who asks least questions when said team in control? - as a CA tech stuck in TX for the obama years and all that goes with that, as a moderate reasoning human during this time, I observe the move is like a voter ID type maneuver, this is gerrymander playbook 101. Simple BUT Tech will work around this and other challenges.

Look, I'll make it easy for you.

[Anonymous Coward]

Democracy is gone.

It's kinda like the Romans: first the Republic then the Empire.

Enjoy the memories you collected from the sixties when life was better. Since Vietnam things have not been the same... violence against other nations has made everyone more callous...

If you can, think about good places to move to; the USA is more about costs and profits now and less about Freedom. It's closing -- metaphorically and literally.

But you might be prevented from returning if you leave... keep that in mind...

We sell more fax boxes than ever

[p51d007]

I've been in the printer, copier, fax, computer business for almost 36 years. We sell more fax modules that connect inside a copier/printer than we ever did with stand alone fax machines. We have a LOT of healthcare related customers, and their common answer is "because of HIPAA" we have to use fax machines. They cannot guarantee the safety and security of an email, if it lands into the hands of the wrong email address. Plus, we run into "we can't give up fax machines...we've ALWAYS had fax machines". I use to run into that mentality in the early 80's when fax machines started getting popular. They wouldn't get a fax, because they always had a messenger service.

Post Office

[Anonymous Coward]

This will help the USPS stay in business

The real reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Their Windows ME finally crashed with no form of recovery (backups? what backups?).

So they decided to use an ancient fax machine from the basement, which actually can't print because both the ink and paper are long expired.

Why not go all the way?

[Anonymous Coward]

What if the FBI said that they only accept requests by carrier pigeon on rare 16th century parchment written in Latin?

I assume that eventually a court will order the FBI to use modern technology to handle FOIA requests since this is a blatant attempt to cripple the system?