FOIA Advisor

FOIA News: Postal Service seeks to claw back FOIA-released documents

FOIA News (2015-2023)Allan BlutsteinComment

USPS Regrets Its Transparency, Asks FOIA Requester To Remove 1,200 Pages It Forgot To Withhold

from the please-double-check-your-work-for-accuracy dept

By Tim Cushing, Techdirect, Sept. 23, 2020

The government has fucked up and it thinks citizens are obligated to help it unfuck itself. We're not. Too bad.

Recently, government accountability nonprofit American Oversight obtained nearly 10,000 pages of memos and emails from the United States Postal Service. The documents dealt with the USPS's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike the USPS's effusive response to this FOIA request, the agency's response to complaints from employees about the danger they were facing was far more tepid.

These documents were shared with the Washington Post, which highlighted the Postal Service's scrapped plan to send every American five masks, as well as the internal turmoil that accompanied the spread of the coronavirus.

Apparently, the USPS had second thoughts about its FOIA response following this unflattering nationwide media coverage. It sent a letter to American Oversight asking it to take down every single one of the 10,000 pages it had given the organization.

Read more here.