Anyone can request information from U.S. officials under the Freedom of Information Act, a law designed to allow people to know what their government is up to. 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. View our interactive database of all the exemptions used in 2008-2009 and how they were used. Some of those statutes allow exemptions that seem quite reasonable, for example to protect medical or financial information. Many others are more puzzling. Citing the Watermelon Research and Promotion Act, for example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has withheld lists of watermelon growers. Under another law, information about the location of “significant” caves has been withheld by USDA and the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Whenever someone makes a request under FOIA, the fees now must be paid with a credit/debit card instead of cash. They want to track whoever is making requests.
John Kiriakou served 15 years in the CIA as a Case Officer (Spy) and as CIA's Head of Counterterrorism Operations in Pakistan where he lead the raid that cap...
An examination of the Tavistock Institute, a theory which seeks to explain how Western societies have been brainwashed by a cabal of social scientists and th...
You need to be a member of 12160 Social Network to add comments!
Join 12160 Social Network