[bpchaps]

Eh, column A and column B. I'm convinced that the only reason this happens is because of bad wording in FOIA requests, combined with a lack of pushback after rejections or missing/redacted information.

A great way to get around that prevailing strategy is to simply chain requests - particularly since "unduly burdensome" is such a popular rejection. For example, I've been after the Chicago mayor's communication records and a recent request for communication records of three companies was rejected for being "unduly burdensome". My response to that is to request their DNS resolution logs and the domains/times/from of sent email. I honestly don't actually care that much about the DNS logs - the information is (mostly) just for finding significantly narrower windows for when communication is likely to have happened. Having an exact time for an email will get rid of their claims of burden.

It still makes me chuckle that their obstinance only makes me request more, and each time it results in more information than I was originally seeking.

If done right, FOIA is a lot more useful than you might think.

[dsfyu404ed]

So basically:

"Can I get the mail.log for $date1 through $date2"

"no that would be too much work"

"is cat {ls -R /var/|grep *.log} |emailthistome.txt easy enough"

"sure here you go"

[bpchaps]

Pretty close! The bigger problem is actually vetting the data for privacy concerns. The original foia request included some code to run a whois on each domain. Not a privacy concern since it's "just" metadata ;)

They also claimed that the burden wasn't worth the public interest, so I pasted in some unsolicited HN comments from folks supporting my work.

I find out tomorrow if it worked.

[cmdrfred]

Government systems are subject to FOIA requests and thus should not contain any data that is considered 'private'. A sane law would tell them "too bad, so sad, it's public now"

[bpchaps]

I completely agree and fought pretty hard towards that, but the court eventually agreed with the state/city.

Excerpt from the court docs of my suit: Additionally, the Illinois Attorney General's Office Public Access Counselor ("PAC") has established that City-issued cell phone numbers are exempt from disclosure pursuant to 5 ILLS 140/7(1)(c), because the disclosure of these numbers would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. As the PAC reasoned, certain City employees are issued cell phones so they may be on call during non-work hours or while away from their offices. Disclosure of these numbers could subject staff to excessive phone calls from the public at all times of day. Further, if staff were forced to turn off their cell phones to reduce such intrusion, they may not be readily available to attend to the business of the public body, defeating the purpose of issuing them cell phones. (See 2010 PAC 8685, issued September 30, 2010, attached hereto as Ex. B.)

Thus, the only phone numbers which are not exempt under FOIA are those that are publically listed and are not home telephone numbers, personal telephone numbers, or work-issued cell phone numbers. In other words, FOIA only compels the production of listed numbers belonging to businesses, governmental agencies and other entities, and only those numbers which are not work-issued cell phones.

That said, this isn't stopping me from continuing aggressive requests that will eventually get me similar information. I know of a way of getting the information they say I couldn't have, while maintaining it as 'public'. need to think through some small details first, though. Don't want to mention it online, though. ;)