DoD: Some FOIA Requesters “Try to Monopolize the System”

By Steven Aftergood, Federation of American Scientists, Apr. 11, 2016

Criticism of the Freedom of Information Act is frequently directed at the way that agencies implement the FOIA process, or the ways that they fail to do so. Requesters complain that responses to requests are delayed, often for years, that exemptions from disclosures are interpreted too broadly or in self-serving ways, and that fee waivers are arbitrarily withheld. It sometimes seems to be necessary to file a lawsuit just in order to get an agency’s attention.

But it turns out that government agencies also have complaints of their own, including what they consider to be abusive behavior by some FOIA requesters.

The latest report from the Department of Defense Chief FOIA Officer notes that some DOD components are “overwhelmed by one or two requesters who try to monopolize the system by filing a large number of requests or submitting disparate requests in groups which require a great deal of administrative time to adjudicate.”

“For instance, one particular requester singlehandedly filed three requests with SOUTHCOM, 53 requests with AFRICOM, 35 requests with SOCOM and 217 requests with OSD/JS [Office of the Secretary of Defense/Joint Staff] for a total of 308 cases this fiscal year alone. For AFRICOM, this represents 43% of their entire incoming requests for the year and 12% for SOCOM. This requester holds over 13% of the currently open and pending requests with OSD/JS and over the past two years has filed 415 initial requests and 54 appeals with this one component,” the 2016 DoD Chief FOIA Officer report said.

Read more here.