FOIA requests and how buried statutes are keeping information secret.

When a government agency withholds information from a requester, it typically must invoke one of nine FOIA exemptions that cover everything from national security to personal privacy. But among that list is an exemption—known as b(3) for its section in the FOI Act—that allows an agency to apply other statutes when denying information requests.

Until now, no one has known just how extensively these other laws were used across the federal government. New data compiled by the Sunshine in Government Initiative [14], a coalition of journalism and transparency groups, shows that agencies have applied more than 240 other laws in withholding information over the last decade.

“FOIA is supposed to be a disclosure act, and these b(3)exemptions make it more of a withholding act,” said Patrice McDermott, director of another transparency group, openthegovernment.org. “They can have a detrimental effect to know what government’s doing and hold it accountable.”

For years such provisions could be easily slipped into legislation without notice. But changes to FOIA that went into effect in 2009 require that proposed legislation must specifically say that it will create a new b(3) exemption. As part of their annual FOIA reports, agencies are now required to disclose not only which exemptions they used but also how many times each was invoked.


Links: http://www.propublica.org/article/foia-exemptions-sunshine-law

http://www.sunshineingovernment.org/

http://openthegovernment.org/