[barney54]

Only now in 2015 the FBI fullfills FOIA requests electronically? That is incredible backward. I thought the Department of Interior was bad because they couldn't do global email searches on even global searches within a specific Bureau, but Interior is light years ahead of the FBI.

[jedberg]

If you're the FBI, what motivation do you have to implement the system? No one ever use an FOIA request to get info about something good to praise them. It's always to get info to smear them.

Why would they want to make this easier?

[scrollaway]

Honestly, all branches of the public sector should strive for maximum transparency. I understand why you're asking this question, but in a truly transparent system, if someone is trying to smear a branch doing a good job, there is plenty of ammunition to demonstrate the opposite.

Incidentally this is why I'm a huge believer in open management models. They work great in FOSS. Being scrutinized by outsiders forces you to think more carefully about what you do. Within a company, employees are generally disincentivized from giving negative feedback and often don't have the full picture to judge with anyway. Outsiders don't have that problem.

[apaprocki]

As a counterexample, the FBI FOIA process is what allowed me to get the only surviving transcription of my grandfather's own words (He died before I was born). I'm incredibly grateful that we live in a system that lets people mine this information for their own reasons. It has been a treasure trove of information for me personally and the staff never hassled me. That goes as well for the NARA archive staff. If anyone on the FOIA team reads this, thank you.

[maxlybbert]

Even assuming that the people at the FBI are altruistic and don't care about whether FOIA requests will be used to smear them, I don't see what incentive they have to make the process easier for people making requests. Once they've complied with what they're legally required to do, other things will get attention in the budget.

[ant6n]

Believing in this kind of argument is accepting corruption.

It's kind of like saying "why should the parties in power fix the electoral system if they benefit from it".

[x1798DE]

I don't think the point of the argument is that it's a good state of affairs. The point is the incentives are wrong, so obviously this will happen. Hoping the FBI's heart grows the sizes won't get you anywhere.

[morisy]

You've been able to submit requests electronically (via email) for years. For releases that are of major popular interest, they post the results in their reading room: vault.fbi.gov

But yes, they typically respond via mail, although over the past five years usually with CDs if it's more than a few pages.