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by pwc
2208 days ago
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> At least according to FOI laws I'm vaguely familiar with (in Australia), an FOI request can only be made for an item of information that is known to exist. People can't go on "fishing expeditions" for, say, all communications between nominated people over a nominated period of time. Interestingly I don't think this is 100% true - under (for example) the federal FOI Act I think a request framed as asking for "email sent on government systems between Alice and Bob in the last six months" would be facially valid, if Alice and Bob were civil servants (although of course exemptions may apply to individual emails). Here's an (Australian) FOI request that is similar in spirit to your example: https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/philip_gaetjens_the_l... which asks for "any emails contained in all of Philip Gaetjens’ outlook items (including deleted items) that contain any of the following terms (in the body of an email and/or in the addressee fields of an email): “liberal.org.au” or “ipa.org.au”", and the department deemed that a valid request. (Philip Gaetjens is a senior civil servant, the Liberals are a political party and the IPA is a right-leaning think tank; it's reasonable to infer that the fishing here is for evidence of a link between the civil service and a particular side of politics.) |
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That aligns with my understanding, that there must be an explicit piece of information you’re looking for or occurrence you’re looking for evidence of, rather than just seeking to dragnet-fish all correspondence to see what’s there.
Anyway, it makes sense to me that messenger app conversations are considered ephemeral like phonecalls and can just naturally disappear, whereas more formal material like meeting minutes, official written correspondence, contracts and public service documents are kept on record and made subject to FOI.