The Sorry State of FOIA
C.J. Ciaramella, Reason, Nov. 13, 2018 (Dec. 2018 Print Edition)
When the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was passed in 1966—about five years before public trust in government started to crater as a result of the Pentagon Papers and then Watergate—it was a landmark law and an exciting, promising new tool for reporters, researchers, and concerned citizens. More than 50 years later, it is a wheezing, arthritic artifact of more optimistic times.
More people than ever want to know what the government is doing in their name and with their money. The number of submitted FOIA requests has steadily increased year-over-year, a trend that has only accelerated under the daily controversies of the Trump administration, which said it received roughly 800,000 such requests in 2017, a record. At the same time, despite recent legislation to strengthen the law, it's more difficult than ever to pry loose documents about the federal government. The Associated Press reported in March that the number of FOIA requests denied or censored by the feds also hit a record high in the first year of the Trump administration: "The times the government said it would be illegal under other U.S. laws to release requested information nearly doubled to 63,749."
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