Legislator Looking To Force Government Agencies To Release FOIAed Documents In Their Original Formats | Techdirt

abernard102@gmail.com 2015-12-29

Summary:

"This is an important step forward for (forced) government transparency. A Colorado legislator is introducing a bill that would require government agencies to stop paying lip service to transparency with their purposefully-hobbled FOIA responses. Arthur Kane at Watchdog.org has the details ... Hopefully, his proposal will become law. This sort of FOIA reform is needed in every state, as well as at the federal level. 

Documents released by the NSA and FBI are often delivered in unsearchable PDFs, made from what look like 7th-generation copies created by a faulty mimeograph and forced through a malfunctioning scanner during an earthquake. This makes it much harder for researchers, journalists and activists to perform keyword searches of released documents, much less accurately track redaction inconsistencies or evolving legal arguments. This is deliberate.  This legislation would also prevent people like Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis from waving a white flag in the face of technology and claiming they have no choice but to convert emails to hard copy (and charge duplication fees).  Government agencies shouldn't be format shifting responsive documents ..."

Link:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151216/06543433097/legislator-looking-to-force-government-agencies-to-release-foiaed-documents-their-original-formats.shtml

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.comment oa.legislation oa.usa oa.government oa.psi oa.formats oa.data oa.foi

Date tagged:

12/29/2015, 10:15

Date published:

12/29/2015, 05:15