FOIA Advisor

FOIA News: FBI named worst FOIA respondent of the decade

FOIA News (2025)Allan BlutsteinComment

Ten Years of The Foilies

A look back at the games governments played to avoid transparency

By Dave Maass, Elec. Frontier Found., Mar. 11, 2025

In the year 2015, we witnessed the launch of OpenAI, a debate over the color of a dress going viral, and a Supreme Court decision that same-sex couples have the right to get married. It was also the year that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) first published The Foilies, an annual report that hands out tongue-in-cheek "awards" to government agencies and officials that respond outrageously when a member of the public tries to access public records through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) or similar laws.

A lot has changed over the last decade, but one thing that hasn't is the steady flow of attempts by authorities to avoid their legal and ethical obligations to be open and accountable. Sometimes, these cases are intentional, but just as often, they are due to incompetence or straight-up half-assedness.

Read more here.