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bit.ly/GIJC23-FOIA

FOIA/RTI INVESTIGATIONS

GIJN 2023

Amanda Hickman

amanda@muckrock.com

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MuckRock Foundation

GIJC 2023: FOIA/RTI Investigations

MuckRock is a US-based nonProfit that facilitates transparency, journalism, and civic participation. MuckRock’s records request service helps journalists, researchers and private citizens access public records at the local, state and federal level.

oTranscribe is a browser based utility that makes transcribing audio a bit easier. Our Accounts service manages login access for a growing slate of tools that are available to newsrooms from outside our repositories. And DocumentCloud is a powerful, free and open source tool that newsrooms use to analyze, annotate and publish primary source documents.

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DocumentCloud

GIJC 2023: FOIA/RTI Investigations

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ANALYZE

We have a few dozen Add-Ons at last count, and more coming every day, that will extract tables from a PDF, find bad redactions, scrape individual sites, bulk import documents, tag documents and more.

Speadsheet Extractor uses Tabula to find tables (and pictures of tables) in PDFs and turn them into actual tables.

Our Whisper AI Add-On uses OpenAI’s whisper to produce a transcription of an audio file, that you can then annotate and embed like you would any other document. Wheeler Copperthwaite reported that he was “pretty creeped out by the accuracy” when he tried it out on a recording of a Naragansett, MA town council meeting.

My favorite example of Bad Redactions in action actually is one that Luiz shared with us. The agency tried to redact a passenger’s name, but actually all they did was highlight it in black. When you run the Add-On you have the option to make the bad redactions good (which is often a good idea if you’re planning to publish the document) or the Add-On can tag them for you and you can go through them yourself.

Jeremy Singer-Vine built an Add-On that listens to RSS feeds, fetches select documents and uploads them to a DocumentCloud project. His Add-On collects and parses FEMA Housing Reports, making them more accessible. See more in his recorded workshop on the subject.

You do need to be in a verified newsroom to use these tools, but the process of getting verified is pretty straightforward if you’re actually a journalist. I’m very happy to talk you through it if you have any questions.

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DocumentCloud

GIJC 2023: FOIA/RTI Investigations

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DocumentCloud

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Thousands of Requests

GIJC 2023: FOIA/RTI Investigations

Public records requests are the heart of what we do. If you file your public record requests through MuckRock, they become part of our public record. We do charge for the service, but it is nominal. And you can embargo requests so they won’t be public until you’re ready to share them.

33,627

58,819

9,082,903

23,553

40,793

127K

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Documented jurisdictions

FOIA Logs to explore, from 21 federal agencies.

Pages released.

Agencies in our database

Fulfilled requests

Requests filed

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City, County, State and Federal Guides

GIJC 2023: FOIA/RTI Investigations

You don’t have to file your request through MuckRock to use our jurisdiction guides which go over the applicable laws in most locations. If you want to know what the California public records law is called, or whether there’s a local law in Zwingle, Iowa that is more expansive than the relevant state law, you can look that up.

The guides cover things like whether there are fee waivers for media, which agencies are exempt, and how appeals work. And we have a decent summary of how responsive agencies in each location are, on average.

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FOIA Log Explorer

GIJC 2023: FOIA/RTI Investigations

We maintain a database of requests that we’ve processed, going back over thirteen years. But this week we launched a new tool that lets you explore all requests filed with federal agencies.

With funding from the Brown Institute, we’ve begun systematically requesting logs of past requests processed by federal agencies and making them searchable and sortable.

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Great Sample �Requests

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Great Sample �Requests

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Collaborations at Scale

GIJC 2023: FOIA/RTI Investigations

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How secure is your child’s data in Virginia’s virtual classrooms? (Tom Nash, VCIJ, May 21, 2020) We worked with the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO to gather privacy policies from School Districts across Virginia. You can see those requests on MuckRock.

California passed a law a few years ago that made certain categories of police disciplinary records available to the public. We worked with the California Reporting Project to systematically request those records from every policing agency in California. And some really powerful reporting has come out of that work, including this reporting in Richmond, California about police dogs and how often people in Richmond are getting bitten by them.

L.A.’s Scoring System for Subsidized Housing Gives Black and Latino People Experiencing Homelessness Lower Priority Scores – The Markup when The Markup published their reporting on metrics the city of Los Angeles uses to prioritize eligibility for housing, they also shared a guide to investigating homeless vulnerability, along with sample requests: Journalists: Investigate Homeless Vulnerability Scoring in Your City – The Markup. That’s also a great guide to approaching public records requests in general.

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We would love to work with you

GIJC 2023: FOIA/RTI Investigations

Though we welcome and encourage paid memberships. most of our tools are free to use. We charge for individual FOIA requests, but we’ll fulfill any public records request for $5 per request.

Tools

If you want to figure out how to approach a larger project, like reaching out to social service agencies across the United States to find contracts, or systematically seeking out investigation records for a specific category of homicides, we can work with you to refine your strategy.

We charge for this service but we’re happy to collaborate on fundraising.

Consulting

We have a library of basic FOIA workshops that we offer for a nominal fee, and we are happy to put together customized training for teams that want to understand a specific area of public records better.

Training

We collaborate with colleges and universities to develop and manage investigative class projects. Managing projects through MuckRock and DocumentCloud means that you have an easy way to ensure that records and requests stay with the project even if journalists (especially student journalists!) move on.

Collaborations

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MuckRock Data Changes Laws

GIJC 2023: FOIA/RTI Investigations

New York Focus

Sept 8, 2021

Of the 4,765 FOIL requests made in New York through MuckRock, a nonprofit founded in 2010 that aids journalists in obtaining public records, just 28% have resulted in records being obtained, after an average wait time of 114 days.

News 12 Connecticut

June 23, 2021

But ongoing data and FOIL requests from organizations like MuckRock prove otherwise.

Alabama Reflector

April 24, 2023

Alabama agencies average 146 days to respond to a request, according to MuckRock, a non-profit organization dedicated to open governments.

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Filing public records requests through MuckRock can make a difference for more than just your reporting.

Having real numbers makes a difference. Because we process so many public records requests, we can offer a pretty definitive snapshot of how a law is doing.

Governor Hochul Promised a “New Era of Transparency.” So Far, Details are Scarce. (Sam Mellins for New York Focus, Sept 8, 2021)

“Agencies are also allowed to deny requests for a number of reasons, such as protecting personal privacy or withholding materials that are not final policy. Under Cuomo, such denials were frequent. Of the 4,765 FOIL requests made in New York through MuckRock, a nonprofit founded in 2010 that aids journalists in obtaining public records, just 28% have resulted in records being obtained, after an average wait time of 114 days. Filers have the option of fighting denials in court, but the process can be complicated and expensive for those not versed in the procedural intricacies of FOIL law.”

Despite changes, organizations claim roadblocks to police records remain (News 12 Connecticut, June 23, 2021)

“Repealing the law was supposed to make it easier for the public to get access to police disciplinary records to increase transparency within local departments and help regain trust in law enforcement. But ongoing data and FOIL requests from organizations like MuckRock prove otherwise.”

“The nonprofit sent FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) requests to 400 police departments across the state. Only 40, 10%, responded within six months of New York repealing 50-a. Ongoing data shows similar results.”

Bill would require public agencies across Alabama to respond to public records requests (Jemma Stephenson, Alabama Reflector, April 24, 2023)

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bit.ly/GIJC23-FOIA

FOIA/RTI Investigations

GIGC 2023

Amanda Hickman

amanda@muckrock.com