[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. ;)