[emilfihlman]

But shouldn't requests like this complete still in a timely matter? If the government uses data that is under freedom of information but effectively doesn't allow people to go over the data, isn't that perversion of the idea of freedom of information?

An alternative is of course that we would treat requests by multiple people as more important, for example, if we assume that 1000 people requested these documents it would only take less than a month, but imho that's a huge slippery slope where information can effectively be hidden by inflating the size of it.

[tssva]

The issue is that not all of the data is subject to a freedom of information request because it may contain PII, trade secrets, etc. Therefore the data must be review to remove that information not releasable through a FOIA request.

[vimax]

If the government can't distinguish between sensitive and nonsensitive data then that sounds like something that should be fixed instead of being used as an excuse.

[missblit]

They can distinguish it... at a rate of around 500 pages per month.

[native_samples]

So let Pfizer submit requests for redaction. They have the resources to run a trial with ~65,000 people in it, they can throw some lawyers at that problem and get it fixed pronto.

Say: you have two weeks to submit any requests. After that, everything gets released. It's your trade secrets after all.

[mattkrause]

The issue is that's not just Pfizer's trade secrets; the documents may also contain PII (e.g., medical history) of those 65,000 people.

[native_samples]

Clearly, niceties like medical privacy are completely irrelevant when it comes to COVID vaccination. Government already went there and a thousand miles beyond so who cares. Replace the names with numbers and call ita day The consequences of bad things being hidden in this data are drastically higher than a few people being deanonymized.

[mattkrause]

Eh, I'm not sure I agree with that[0], but even if I did, the government skirting (what you think is) the law once certainly should not be a reason for it to do so again in the future. As it stands, they are legally required to redact PII.

If someone actually wants to understand how/why the vaccine was approved, the most sensible option IMO would be to tailor the FOIA Request more narrowly. Request the summary section: it should lay out the rationale, without diving into specific details that might need redaction. The only other alternatives I see are lobbying congress to either a) allocate more money for FOIA or b) make some categories/documents releasable as-is.

OTOH, asking for a third of a million pages--many of which no one has real intention of reading--does seem like a good publicity stunt.

[0] If participating in a clinical trial gets (potentially embarrassing) personal details leaked, we won't have nearly as many volunteers next time.