[tptacek]

Essentially all public functions that create records create, by definition, public records. There are exceptions, but they're much narrower than you'd expect. You're entitled to demand copies of the records that federal agencies collect, and those records are created with the expectation that they can be produced on demand. Most agencies do a reasonable job of making things overtly public, so you can just download them. But even if they don't, you can just FOIA them.