The FOI Advocate: South Carolina Local Governments Post Check ...: "The official blog of the National Freedom of Information Coalition and the FOI ADVOCATE, in which we bring news of freedom of information developments far and wide... NFOIC is a coalition of state groups dedicated to open government, ...
The FOI Advocate - http://foiadvocate.blogspot.com/"
Ghana: Rejoinder: Coalition on Right To Information Reacts To Public Agenda's ...: "... which appeared on the front cover page of the Public Agenda edition of Monday November 2, 2009 under the title, 'FOI BILL IN PARLIAMENT. ...
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BBC - Open Secrets: Immigration risks and FOI: "A blog about freedom of information, written by the BBC's Martin Rosenbaum.
Whatanews4u.Sports - http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/"
Tories accuse government of breaking FoI laws (Epolitix via Yahoo ...: "The Conservatives have accused the government of deliberately breaking its own Freedom of Information law over requests concerning immigration policy.
government - http://government.marrakech-marrakech.net/"
No accountability behind board's booty haul: "It all goes back to 2003, when the Campbell government turned BC Ferries into a quasi-private company shielded from the FOI act. The government at that time ...
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Selangor to have Freedom of Information Enactment: "Apart from exposing the wrongdoings, he disclosed that the move is also to highlight the need for a Freedom of Information (FOI) Enactment, which will be ...
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Feds Charge $522,000 For One FOIA Request: "
The Treasury Department wants more than $500,000 to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request, a fee an attorney on the case suggested Tuesday might be one of the largest bills of its kind.
“I have not seen one that has been larger,” said Noah Wood, a Missouri attorney suing the government to comply with his nearly 4-year-old FOIA request.
The Treasury Department, Wood said, is “downright telling us where we can stick it.”
Wood wants the government to produce documents he hopes shows where are perhaps millions of dollars of once-frozen assets of a former Libyan-backed company in the United States, which Wood says owes his law firm legal fees. Toward that end, he is suing the government (.pdf) to comply with the FOIA request and to reduce the bill.
Still, the government wants Wood to pay “approximately $522,886″ for the records. The original tab was $26,000-plus, but after some revisions in what Wood was seeking, the government upped the ante – even though not all information being sought would be forthcoming, according to the bill. (.pdf)
The monstrous tab, according to a Treasury Department internal audit, (.pdf) is about as much as the $527,000 the agency charged last year to process thousands of FOIA requests – recouping what the audit said was about 4.5 percent of its actual costs.
What’s more, Wood said a former Treasury Department official working with him notified the agency to the “exact” whereabouts of the information.
“We basically told them the exact file cabinet it was in,” Wood said in a telephone interview.
The government said it was charging the “commercial” rate of 20 cents per page plus staff costs, and said the fees could go higher. Media and non-profits usually are not charged.
The FBI, which is also part of a similar Freedom of Information Act request from Wood to acquire the same information on the Libyan-backed company — People’s Committee for Students of Libyan Arab Jamahariya — said it would charge $242.20 for 2,523 pages of documents, according to Wood’s lawsuit. The documents, however, have not been forthcoming.
The assets of the company, which subsidized Libyans’ educations in the United States, were frozen in 1986. The freeze was lifted in 2004, leaving Wood to trace the money trail.
See Also:
Obama's Open Government Directive Nears Release: "By J. Nicholas Hoover President Obama's Open Government Directive will released by the ... and promising to accelerate Freedom of Information Act requests. ...
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UK Freedom of Information Blog: Extension of FOI Act to ACPO: "In a debate on the Policing and Crime Bill, Home Office minister Lord West of Spithead, confirmed that a Section 5 Order extending the FOI Act to the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) would be introduced early in the 2009-10 ...
UK Freedom of Information Blog - http://foia.blogspot.com/"
Artist, Open Government, and Civil Liberties Groups Join Calls for ...: "The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests file by PK, EFF, ... urging him to keep his promise of making government more open, transparent, ...
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