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| Sep 10, 2026 | Lawmakers Ask Lutnick To Blacklist Appin, The Hack-For-Hire Firm That Threatens Almost Anyone Who Prints Its Name | Remember Appin? It’s the Indian “hack for hire” company that got so upset about Reuters’ giant investigation — which detailed how Appin grew into a “leading cyberespionage firm” that “stole secrets from executives, politicians, military off... |
| Feb 4, 2026 | Baton Rouge Acquires A Straight-Up Military Surveillance Drone | The Baton Rouge Police Department announced recently that it will begin using a drone designed by military equipment manufacturer Lockheed Martin and Edge Autonomy, making it one of the first local police departments to use an unmanned aeri... |
| Oct 23, 2024 | New York PD Is Training Officers That Someone Saying ‘I Can’t Breathe’ Is Just ‘Excited Delirium’ | Excited delirium just won’t go away. No medical association recognizes this condition as factually true. And no cop shop will ever move away from using it as a handy excuse for in-custody killings, at least not until forced to by state legi... |
| Jul 16, 2024 | АНБ не смогло просмотреть запись 1980-х годов из-за отсутствия подходящего магнитофона | Агентство национальной безопасности США заявило, что не может просмотреть запись лекции легенды информатики адмирала Грейс Хоппер по компьютерной истории 1980-х годов, потому что у ведомства нет подходящего магнитофона.
Две катушки со старо... |
| Jul 3, 2024 | Baltimore PD Said It Would Stop Scraping Phones With Cellebrite Following A Court Ruling But It Kinda Looks Like It Never Really Did | Showing yet again that you can lead a cop to a court order but you can’t make them follow it, Matthew Petti reports for Reason that the Baltimore PD apparently barely paused its scraping of seized cell phones following a court order telling... |
| Feb 2, 2024 | A startup allegedly “hacked the world.” Then came the censorship—and now the backlash. | Enlarge
WIRED staff/Getty Images reader comments 18
Hacker-for-hire firms like NSO Group and Hacking Team have become notorious for enabling their customers to spy on vulnerable members of civil society. But as far back as a decade ago in I... |
| Feb 1, 2024 | Sorry Appin, We’re Not Taking Down Our Article About Your Attempts To Silence Reporters | Back in December, we wrote about Appin. We were not writing about the reports (of which there have been many) that the organization that started as a sort of cybersecurity training school, but morphed into a kind of “hack-for-hire” scheme w... |
| Apr 11, 2023 | Massachusetts State Police Fail (Twice) To Redact Troopers’ Birthdates In Public Records Response | To err is human. To forgive is beyond me. Sorry. That’s just the way it is. If we’re paying outsized portions of local budgets to law enforcement agencies more interested in selective enforcement, rights violations, complete abdication of p... |
| Mar 2, 2023 | Disgraced Ex-Sheriff Joe Arpaio Still Costing Taxpayers Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars | The cost of having a bad cop on the force never ends once the officer is no longer employed. The bleeding continues for years, either as tangible costs related to ongoing civil rights lawsuits or, less tangibly, the aftershocks of their neg... |
| Dec 20, 2021 | Secrecy Creep | In 1968, the Central Intelligence Agency discovered a sunken Soviet nuclear submarine resting deep on the ocean floor. The agency built a 600-foot ship outfitted with a giant claw to raise the submarine to the surface and access the valuabl... |
| Sep 29, 2021 | Clearview Suffers Brief Bout Of Better Judgment, Drops Subpoena Demanding Activists' Communications With Journalists | Just a few days ago, Clearview — the company that scrapes the web to build a facial recognition database it sells to law enforcement, government agencies around the world, and a number of private parties — decided to make itself even less l... |
| Sep 29, 2021 | Clearview Suffers Brief Bout Of Better Judgment, Drops Subpoena Demanding Activists' Communications With Journalists | Just a few days ago, Clearview -- the company that scrapes the web to build a facial recognition database it sells to law enforcement, government agencies around the world, and a number of private parties -- decided to make itself even less... |
| Sep 27, 2021 | Clearview Tosses Subpoena To Non-Party Transparency Advocates, Demands Copies Of Communications With Journalists | Clearview is currently being sued by a small percentage of its database of scraped personal info. It is also being sued by a few state officials over privacy law violations. It is (also) also being side-eyed closely by the federal governmen... |
| Sep 24, 2021 | SEC Hints at Tether Probe in Records Request Denial | The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) may be investigating Tether and Tether Operations Limited, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request found.
The SEC said it would not release records around Tether because they were collec... |
| Sep 1, 2021 | Apple secures first states to support digital driver’s licenses, but privacy questions linger | Apple’s plan to digitize your wallet is slowly taking shape. What started with boarding passes and venue tickets later became credit cards, subway tickets and student IDs. Next on Apple’s list to digitize are driver’s licenses and state IDs... |
| Jun 25, 2021 | Clearview Forbids Users From Scraping Its Database Of Images It Scraped From Thousands Of Websites | Clearview continues to dominate the “Most Hated” category in the facial recognition tech games. And with Amazon tossing aside its “Rekognition” program for the time being (it’s spelled with a K because the AI tried to spell “recognition” co... |
| Jun 25, 2021 | Clearview Forbids Users From Scraping Its Database Of Images It Scraped From Thousands Of Websites | Clearview continues to dominate the "Most Hated" category in the facial recognition tech games. And with Amazon tossing aside its "Rekognition" program for the time being (it's spelled with a K because the AI tried to sp... |
| Apr 2, 2021 | Your Slack DMs aren’t as private as you think | Is Slack good for actually getting your work done? That’s debatable. But the popular messaging platform — which boasted more than 12 million daily active users as of last year — is definitely a promising medium for employers, regulatory age... |
| Mar 4, 2021 | Cops Refuse to Say What Kind of Weapons They Are Using Against Protesters | Beginning in late May 2020, residents of Portland, Oregon took to the streets to protest the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and hundreds of other Black people at the hands of police. In response, columns of police officers shower... |
| Dec 21, 2020 | Sheriff's Office Asks Court To Prevent A Different Gov't Agency From Releasing Records Related To The US Marshals' Killing Of An Antifa Activist | A controversial shooting that resulted in another controversial shooting is generating even more controversy. |
| Nov 24, 2020 | Seattle PD Detective Took Clearview Facial Recognition Tech For A Spin, Possibly Violating Local Laws | It looks like some members of the Seattle Police Department have taken an interest in Clearview. Clearview scrapes photos and data from the open web and sells access to its untested facial recognition AI to government agencies, private comp... |
| Oct 22, 2020 | Congress, With Nothing Important On Its Hands, Seeks To Rush Through Nomination Of Anti-230 FCC Commissioner | You might think that Congress has more important issues on its hands, with a pandemic still going on, issues around disinformation and the election, massive fires still burning in parts of the US, a record number of hurricanes pounding the ... |
| Oct 22, 2020 | Congress, With Nothing Important On Its Hands, Seeks To Rush Through Nomination Of Anti-230 FCC Commissioner | You might think that Congress has more important issues on its hands, with a pandemic still going on, issues around disinformation and the election, massive fires still burning in parts of the US, a record number of hurricanes pounding the ... |
| Sep 3, 2020 | Fourteen Places Have Passed Local Surveillance Laws. Here’s How They’re Doing. | As protests against police brutality have continued nationwide, Madison, Wisconsin, and New York City have joined 12 other localities that have established procedures for deciding when and how local police can surveil residents. These kinds... |
| Aug 25, 2020 | Law Enforcement Training: People Saying 'I Can't Breathe' Are Just Suffering From 'Excited Delirium' | Police officers are not “worried” about “excited delirium.” This supposed mental health condition — which isn’t recognized by the American Psychiatric Association, American Medical Association, or the World Health association — exists mainl... |
| Aug 25, 2020 | Law Enforcement Training: People Saying 'I Can't Breathe' Are Just Suffering From 'Excited Delirium' | Police officers are not "worried" about "excited delirium." This supposed mental health condition -- which isn't recognized by the American Psychiatric Association, American Medical Association, or the World Health assoc... |
| Aug 7, 2020 | Las Vegas Cops Used ‘Unsuitable’ Facial Recognition Photos To Make Arrests | Despite its growing reach and sophistication, facial recognition remains a fickle technology. It works best when fed with a frontal shot of the subject’s head, in good lighting, taken from a couple feet away. When deployed for police survei... |
| May 7, 2020 | Secret Service Sends FOIA Requester A Redacted Version Of A Public DOJ Press Release | The government loves its secrets. It loves them so much it does stupid things to, say, "secure the nation..." or "protect the integrity of deliberative processes" or whatever the fuck. We should not trust the government'... |
| May 7, 2020 | Secret Service Sends FOIA Requester A Redacted Version Of A Public DOJ Press Release | The government loves its secrets. It loves them so much it does stupid things to, say, “secure the nation…” or “protect the integrity of deliberative processes” or whatever the fuck. We should not trust the government’s reasoning when it ch... |
| Feb 10, 2020 | Inside Chainalysis’ Multimillion-Dollar Relationship With the US Government | It started with a $9,000 data software contract for the FBI in 2015.
But just five years later, Chainalysis is now the cryptocurrency-tracing equivalent of Palantir, the data analytics company flush with lucrative government software contra... |
| Jan 15, 2020 | Company Sells Surveillance Cameras Hidden In Tombstones, Threatens Websites For Talking About Its Tombstone Cameras | Thanks to a FOIA request by Open the Government policy analyst Freddy Martinez, we now know someone’s trying to sell cops cameras they can hide in… gravestones? |
| Jan 15, 2020 | Company Sells Surveillance Cameras Hidden In Tombstones, Threatens Websites For Talking About Its Tombstone Cameras | Thanks to a FOIA request by Open the Government policy analyst Freddy Martinez, we now know someone's trying to sell cops cameras they can hide in… gravestones? |
| May 15, 2019 | Axon Hints It May Ruin A City's Credit Rating For Cancelling Its Contract For Body Cam Footage Storage | Axon — formerly Taser — is betting big on police body cameras. It doesn’t care much about the hardware. That’s the just the foot in the door. The real money is subscription and storage fees. These contracts are worth far more than the hardw... |
| May 10, 2019 | Researchers Are Liberating Thousands of Pages of Forgotten Hacking History From the Government | In 1989, just a few months after the web became a reality, a computer worm infected thousands of computers across the world, including those of NASA. The worm showed a message on the screens of the infected computers: “Your System Has Been ... |
| Apr 24, 2019 | Guy In Charge Of Oil Well Safety Gave Out His Cell Phone Number, Now Help Us Figure Out Who Called Him | Last November, John Oliver had a fun episode of his show discussing whether or not President Trump had fulfilled his promise to “drain the swamp” (spoiler alert: he did not). Part of that episode focused on the story of Scott Angelle, who T... |
| Mar 18, 2019 | ICE Has Access To ALPR Databases, Bypasses Internal Restrictions By Outsourcing Searches To Local Cops | ICE has been wanting full access to the billions of license plate records stored in ALPR databases for years. The DHS first floated the idea more than five years ago. It was reined in briefly in response to public backlash and Congressional... |
| Jan 22, 2019 | Oregon Lawmaker Wants Public Records Requesters To Tell Gov't Agencies What They Plan To Do With Released Documents | As if government agencies needed any new ways to thwart accountability and transparency. Oregon legislators are introducing a host of alterations to the state’s public records law, but one of those looks like nothing more than an easily-abu... |
| Jan 14, 2019 | Previously secret CIA report documents spear attack against surveillance plane | An aerial image from a low-level overflight of the Congo by a US Air Force reconnaissance aircraft in 1964 caught this moment in which a spear was thrown at the aircraft. reader comments 248 with 103 posters participating, including story a... |
| Jan 7, 2019 | The Ajit Pai FCC Often Battles FOIA Requests For No Reason, Showcasing Its Hostility To Transparency | You might recall that FCC boss Ajit Pai promised to operate the “most transparent” FCC ever. Initially, Pai lived up to that promise by changing FCC policy so that FCC orders would be released before they were voted on; a pretty obvious imp... |
| Dec 3, 2018 | Public Records Law Reforms Still Haven't Made Massachusetts Any Less Of A Hellhole For Records Requesters | Nearly a third of the official guide to public records requests published by the state of Massachusetts is given over to exemptions. That should give records requesters some idea of what they’re in for when tangling with the state’s agencie... |
| Nov 21, 2018 | MuckRock Release ALPR Dataset Covering 200 Gov't Agencies And 2.5 Billion License Plate Records | MuckRock has concluded its national automatic license plate reader survey. Or, at least, it’s as close to completed as humanly possible, what with more than a handful of agencies still refusing to turn over data. But there’s a ton of info i... |
| Oct 10, 2018 | New Laws Will Force Transparency On California Law Enforcement Agencies Starting Next Year | Starting next year, California law enforcement agencies will finally be subject to a bit more scrutiny and accountability. For years, law enforcement officers have been able to hide misdeeds behind super-restrictive public records laws — la... |
| Sep 18, 2018 | CIA Game Now In Production: Last Chance To Order | Pre-order your copy of CIA: Collect It All today » |
| Jul 17, 2018 | DHS Tells Records Requester It Can't Find Documents It Posted To Its Own Website | Government agencies large and small, federal and non-federal, are aggressive non-participants in the free flow of information. Laws enacted to force the government to be responsive to records requests have made it possible to obtain documen... |
| Jun 13, 2018 | 'Transparent' FCC Doesn't Want To Reveal Any Details About Ajit Pai's Stupid Reese's Mug | One of FCC Chair Ajit Pai’s claims about how he’s changed the FCC is that he’s making it more transparent. And, to be fair, he did make one key change that his predecessors failed to do: which is releasing the details of rulemakings before ... |
| Jun 12, 2018 | Philly-based journo helper DocumentCloud is merging with MuckRock | Philly-based DocumentCloud, makers of a document-hosting and annotating tool for reporters, announced Monday its merger with Cambridge, Mass.-based MuckRock, creators of a tool to file and track public records requests.
Both journalism-focu... |
| Jun 4, 2018 | Sheriffs Are Raking In Millions In Prison Phone Fees And Some Really Don't Want To Talk About It | MuckRock is currently conducting a public records survey of prison telephone contracts. What it has secured so far will shock you, but only if you haven’t been paying attention. There’s nothing like a captive audience, and prisoners are the... |
| May 24, 2018 | DHS Fusion Center Gets Request For Documents On Extremists, Decides To Hand Over Mind Control Docs Instead | Once you release a document to a public records requesters, it’s a public record, whether you meant to release it or not. The person handling FOIA requests for the Washington State Fusion Center (a DHS/local law enforcement collaboration kn... |
| May 4, 2018 | FOIA Heroes At The FBI Protect Superman's Privacy; Refuse To Hand Over Secret Identity To Requester | Following an FOIA lawsuit against the FBI, Emma Best is raking in agency documents dealing with the Church of Scientology. The FBI doesn’t care much for FOIA requesters and the informal policy on handling released documents is to redact as ... |
| Apr 25, 2018 | Turns Out Lots Of People Want To Play The CIA's Card Game | Well, it appears we can both confirm and acknowledge that lots and lots of people want to play the CIA’s in-house training card game. As we announced on Monday, we’ve taken the available details of the internal CIA game Collection Deck, and... |
| Apr 23, 2018 | The CIA Made A Card Game… And We're Releasing It | Yes, the CIA made a card game. And… we’re releasing it. No, really. If you want to play the top secret card game that the CIA used to train analysts, you can now back our Kickstarter project for CIA: Collect It All. |
| Apr 6, 2018 | FCC Withholds Ajit Pai's Emails Regarding The Infamous 'Harlem Shake' Video | Last December, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai starred in a “PSA” produced by The Daily Caller. In the video, Pai addressed all the “trolls” in the net neutrality debate, reassuring the public that they will still be abl... |
| Apr 5, 2018 | License Plate Reader Company Says Public Records Requests For ALPR Documents Are Just Clickbait | It turns out the most oppressed demographic in this country is the one with power, guns, unions, extra rights, and plenty of civil immunity. Law enforcement agencies around the country currently besieged by public records requests are havin... |
| Apr 5, 2018 | The FCC Is Refusing to Release Emails About Ajit Pai's 'Harlem Shake' Video | It seems even the Federal Communications Commission doesn’t want you to know exactly who thought this video was a good idea:
A joint production with online publication The Daily Caller, the above video was released in December just one day ... |
| Mar 14, 2018 | Police Department With Eight Full-Time Officers Acquired 31 Military Vehicles Thru DoD's Surplus Program | The Defense Department’s 1033 program has allowed law enforcement to muddy the water on the distinction between police force and military force. Given the right reasoning (most commonly cited: Wars on Terror/Drugs), police departments are a... |
| Mar 6, 2018 | CIA Still Arguing Its Official Leaks To Journalists Shouldn't Be Subject To FOIA Requests | Last week, a federal judge pointed out the obvious to the CIA: release-to-one is release-to-all, no matter how the agency’s lawyers spin it. The CIA had emailed classified information to certain journalists. When another journalist sought c... |
| Mar 1, 2018 | Bureau Of Land Management Decides It's Going To Be A Lot Less Receptive To FOIA Requests | The new administration’s plan to undo everything Obama ever did (along with lots of stuff other presidents put in place) continues. Fighting leakers and multiple investigations, the Trump administration is steamrolling regulation by slashin... |
| Jan 18, 2018 | Amazon’s HQ2 finalists are big cities with secretive bids | We are excited to bring Transform 2022 back in-person July 19 and virtually July 20 - 28. Join AI and data leaders for insightful talks and exciting networking opportunities. Register today!
Amazon’s announcement that cities had a chance to... |
| Jan 18, 2018 | After The 'Octopus Incident' White House Threatened To Stop 'Menacing Logos' From Spy Satellites | Back in late 2013, we wrote about the insanity of the “logo” placed on a spy satellite by the National Reconnaissance Organization, which consisted — literally — of an octopus enveloping the globe, and the tag line “Nothing is Beyond Our Re... |
| Jan 18, 2018 | Amazon’s HQ2 finalists are big cities with secretive bids | Amazon’s announcement that cities had a chance to pitch themselves for the company’s second North American headquarters drew a whopping 238 bids from cities across North America — cities as diverse as Fresno, California, and Stonecrest, Geo... |
| Dec 15, 2017 | It Looks Like The FBI Thought About Prosecuting FOIA Requesters After Influx Of Automated Requests | Emma Best of MuckRock has unearthed some disturbing details in an FBI response to an FOIA request: apparently the agency considered — however briefly — the investigation and prosecution of people filing requests. |
| Nov 29, 2017 | Maine Government Agency Tries To Charge Public Records Requester $750 For Opening A PDF | We’ve seen lots of ridiculous amounts tossed around by government agencies in response to public records requests. Most of the ridiculous amounts we’ve covered give the appearance that the agency making the demand feels requesters are also ... |
| Nov 24, 2017 | How 12 cities are trying to woo Amazon’s $5 billion HQ2 | We are excited to bring Transform 2022 back in-person July 19 and virtually July 20 - 28. Join AI and data leaders for insightful talks and exciting networking opportunities. Register today!
In the month since 238 cities submitted a bid for... |
| Nov 24, 2017 | How 12 cities are trying to woo Amazon’s $5 billion HQ2 | In the month since 238 cities submitted a bid for Amazon’s HQ2, few details have emerged as to what various cities and states have tried to entice Amazon with (except for a 21-foot saguro cactus, of course).
MuckRock, a journalism nonprofit... |
| Oct 30, 2017 | Declassified Docs Show NSA Trying To Prosecute A Journalist For His Successful FOIA Requests | MuckRock has been digging into a large pile of declassified CIA documents for the past several months and has come up with some surprising finds. It recently liberated nearly 13 million pages of CIA documents — known as the CREST archive — ... |
| Oct 30, 2017 | Researcher Still Being Pursued By Russian Bank Over Last Year's Mistaken Trump Connection Story | The war on security researchers continues. But then, it’s never really shown any sign of abating, has it? Report after report comes in of security researchers being threatened with lawsuits or arrest simply for finding and reporting securit... |
| Aug 22, 2017 | Texas Agency Says It Needs $1 Million To Hand Over Records On Prison Sexual Assault | Here we go again. Want to keep citizens away from their requested public records? Do what you can to ensure they can’t afford it. |
| Aug 2, 2017 | Massachusetts State Police Take $180 From Records Requester; Refuse To Turn Over Records | The police department of the largest city in the US often tops the list of public records villains. According to FOIA requesters, the NYPD manages to out-stonewall notoriously recalcitrant entities like the NSA, FBI, and CIA. Not far behind... |
| Jun 21, 2017 | Deputy Attorney General Asks Congress For $21 Million To Solve The FBI's 'Going Dark' Problem | James Comey may have been unceremoniously dumped by the Commander-in-Chief, but his device encryption legacy lives on. |
| Jun 19, 2017 | There Is No 'Going Dark' Problem | Former FBI Director James Comey made plenty of headlines with his insistence cellphone encryption would be the end of law enforcement as we know it. Comey’s assertions made it seem as though regular police investigative work was no longer o... |
| Apr 6, 2017 | Twitter Sues Homeland Security Over Attempt To Unmask 'Alt' Immigration Twitter Account | As you probably know by now, there are a whole bunch of “alt” or “rogue” government Twitter accounts, initially inspired by what appeared to be tweets from a former National Parks Service employee containing “rogue” information against the ... |
| Mar 2, 2017 | Chicago PD Uses Copyright To Refuse Release Of Its 35-Year-Old Deadly Force Training Film | When copyright is deployed as a censor, it usually means the removal of content. In the case of Freddy Martinez of Lucy Parsons Lab (instrumental in peeling back the opacity covering the Chicago PD’s “black budget“), copyright is the excuse... |
| Feb 6, 2017 | FBI axes FOIA requests by email, so dust off your fax machine | As tech-savvy government efforts like 18F and the USDS take technological strides forward, other parts of the government are abandoning modern technology altogether.
Starting next month, the FBI will no longer accept Freedom of Information ... |
| Jan 24, 2017 | Database CIA Claimed Too Difficult To Compile For FOIA Requesters Released In Full On CIA Website | The CIA has millions of declassified records stashed away in Maryland — something it claimed was accessible to the public. Actual access, however, resembles something out of Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil,” rather than what any reasonable person w... |
| Jan 24, 2017 | FBI Seeks To Massage Lousy FOIA Response Times, Deter Requesters By Calling All Responses Over 50 Pages 'Complex' | The FBI has reams of documents of interest to the public. And it knows it. That’s why it plays keepaway with so much of them. Sometimes it releases tons of fully-redacted pages to requesters — a middle finger to government transparency that... |
| Jan 11, 2017 | Florida PD's Stingray Documents Oddly Don't Mention Stingrays Once | Curtis Waltman, filing his public records request through MuckRock, has obtained several hundred pages of documents related to IMSI catchers/Stingray devices from the Sarasota (FL) Police Department. There are a handful of interesting aspec... |
| Jan 4, 2017 | Defense Department Oversight Finds More Evidence Of Retaliation Against Whistleblowers | More evidence has surfaced showing the US government really doesn’t care for whistleblowers. A Defense Department Inspector General’s report [PDF] obtained by MuckRock contains details of Air Force supervisors turning against a civilian emp... |
| Dec 28, 2016 | CIA Admits It Hasn't Touched FOIA Request In Six Years… Says It Will Close Case If Requestor Doesn't Reply | Back in 2011, MuckRock user Jason Smathers filed a FOIA with the CIA for all responses they had sent to requesters containing the term “record systems.” This was a reference to two earlier rejections he had received from the Agency, which c... |
| Dec 8, 2016 | Here's How Much a StingRay Cell Phone Surveillance Tool Costs | Rochester Police Department in New York responded to our Cell Site Simulator Census with a rare look into the pricing and packaging of the cellphone surveillance tech: a completely unredacted quote list of Harris Corporation products.
Polic... |
| Nov 18, 2016 | Cold War Documents Show The FBI Thinks It Can Be The CIA — And The US Military — If Just Given The Chance | The FBI has, for years now apparently, always wished to be far more than it actually is. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the FBI shifted its focus from law enforcement to “national security.” It continues to try to expand this role and bel... |
| Oct 12, 2016 | The State Department Has Taken Over Three Years On A FOIA Request About How Long It Takes To Process FOIA Requests | Back in 2013, a young Shawn Musgrave filed a FOIA request with the State Department for its cables regarding former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. To his surprise, he was given an estimated completion date (ECD) of December 2015 ... |
| Sep 30, 2016 | CIA Took Three Years To Reject FOIA Request For Criteria For Rejecting FOIA Requests | Curious about what criteria the CIA have for determining if they “can neither confirm nor deny” something? So did Jason Smathers, who back in 2010 filed one of MuckRock’s earliest requests for exactly that. Six years later, he still doesn’t... |
| Sep 19, 2016 | MuckRock & Vice Announce Fellowship To Investigate Peter Thiel | So this is interesting. MuckRock, the really useful FOIA platform (that I regularly use for filing FOIA requests), has announced what it’s calling MuckRock’s Thiel Fellowship, in which it’s offering to give free service to between one and t... |
| Jun 15, 2016 | FBI Sues To Block Disclosure Of Surveillance Cameras Locations Because It Would Violate The Privacy Of Those Surveilled | Another injunction request has been filed in response to a Phil Mocek public records request pertaining to Seattle’s power utility. This time, Mocek and MuckRock (through which Mocek’s requests have been routed) are not named as defendants.... |
| May 31, 2016 | Court Says MuckRock Must Take Down Smart Grid Company's Documents Because Judge Has 'No Time' To Review Case Properly | Last week, we covered a multinational corporation’s attempt to force MuckRock to take down documents supplied by the city of Seattle to Phil Mocek. Landis+Gyr, which was awarded the contract to supply the city with “smart meters” in conjunc... |
| May 27, 2016 | The NSA's Guide To The Internet Is The Weirdest Thing You'll Read Today | The NSA has a well-earned reputation for being one of the tougher agencies to get records out of, making those rare FOIA wins all the sweeter. In the case of Untangling the Web, the agency’s 2007 guide to internet research, the fact that th... |
| May 26, 2016 | 'Smart Grid' Company Demands MuckRock Turn Over Info On Anyone Who Might Have Seen Public Records Docs Involving It | Earlier this year, FOIA enthusiast/privacy activist Phil Mocek requested documents from Seattle City Light, the city’s public-owned utility. Mocek was seeking info on the utility’s proposed “smart meter” system, which carried with it some o... |
| May 17, 2016 | At the cost of security everywhere, Google dorking is still a thing | anutkak43 reader comments 102 with 63 posters participating
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Some people never seem to learn. A recent investigation by security firm Compaas trawled Google Docs and Dropbox... |
| Apr 11, 2016 | The 'Darth Vader' of Cyberwar Sold Services to Canada | Documents show the Canadian military paid thousands of dollars to one of the world's most infamous cyber security firms at least twice.
Although the military says the money is merely a subscription fee for emailed reports, online security s... |
| Mar 17, 2016 | MuckRock's FOIA Redaction Hall Of Shame | This week is Sunshine Week, and the good folks over at FOIA site Muckrock.com have encouraged us to repost this wonderful/horrifying post on the worst FOIA redactions. You can also view the original MuckRock’s FOIA redaction hall of shame o... |
| Mar 7, 2016 | Defense Department Tells MuckRock It Will Need To Come Up With $660 Million To Cover FOIA Request Fees | Nothing quite tells the public to mind its own business like attaching a ridiculous fee demand to an FOIA response. It’s pretty easy to price the public out of the transparency market, seeing as it doesn’t have access to the monetary resour... |
| Feb 19, 2016 | NYPD Says It Has No Record Of Asking Disney To Use Copyright To Shut Down Times Square Characters, Despite Public Admission | It’s hard to imagine in the depths of this frigid New York winter, but last summer the city seemed to be in the grips of a Times Square Problem. Costumed characters — and the relative newcomers, painted topless women — were declared a publi... |
| Jan 8, 2016 | FBI Finally Completes FOIA Request 1,393 Days After It Was Filed; Withholds All 509 Responsive Pages | Michael Morisy — founder of FOIA clearinghouse MuckRock — has been waiting since February of 2012 for the FBI to hand over information on its GPS tracking devices. Specifically, Morisy was looking for information on any devices it deactivat... |
| Dec 1, 2015 | Boston PD Finally Confirms It Has A Stingray Device In Its Possession | The Boston Police Department has been fighting two FOIA requests — one from Mike Katz-Lacabe and one from Shawn Musgrave — for months. We covered Katz-Lacabe’s battle back in June. In that one, the BPD denied the release of documents relate... |
| Nov 24, 2015 | Documents Show 1033 Program Still Resulting In Lots Of Lost Weapons And Other Abuse | The Pentagon’s 1033 program is a case study in unintended consequences. The idea — put military equipment back into service rather than simply scrapping it — has some merit. The actual deployment has been a nightmare. |
| Nov 5, 2015 | NYPD Wants $42,000 To Turn Over Documents Related To Discharges Of Officers' Firearms | The NYPD is jerking around FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) requesters again. Usually, the NYPD just pretends it’s the CIA (somewhat justified, considering its hiring of former government spooks) and claims everything is so very SECRET it ... |
| Oct 14, 2015 | Kim Davis's Approach To Email More Outdated Than Her Views On Marriage | Kim Davis — yes, THAT Kim Davis — is proving to be as willfully obtuse in her other duties as a Kentucky county clerk as she has been in refusing to recognize the Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage. Her brief stint in the local j... |
| Oct 7, 2015 | Tacoma Police Sued Over Heavily-Redacted Stingray Non-Disclosure Agreement | Despite there being multiple copies of nearly-identical FBI/Stingray non-disclosure agreements in the public domain at this point, the Tacoma (WA) Police Department still refuses to provide FOIA requesters with an unredacted version of its ... |
| Aug 31, 2015 | FBI: Hurricane Katrina Made It Clear We Just Don't Have Enough Stingray Devices | In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the federal government stepped up to assure the nation that as horrifically damaging as the storm was, we would all come out of it OK.* |
