FOIA requesters

The Office of Government Information Services issued its recommendations for policy changes to the federal Freedom of Information Act yesterday, more than a year after it submitted a draft version to the Office of Management and Budget in February 2011 for review.

A U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., ruled earlier this week that a group consisting of more than 50 members of the United Kingdom’s Parliament is considered a foreign “government entity” and cannot obtain information from U.S. intelligence agencies under a provision in the federal Freedom of Information Act.

The importance of streamlining agency efforts to fill federal Freedom of Information Act requests was the hot topic at a subcommittee hearing yesterday of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in the U.S. House of Representatives.

A federal court of appeals ruled this week that two fugitives accused of failing to report taxable earnings are not entitled to Internal Revenue Service (IRS) records gathered for use in the criminal investigations against them.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Seattle (9th Cir.) upheld the government’s argument that releasing the requested documents – which included agents’ working papers, a witness list, and internal correspondence – would impede its enforcement proceedings.

Transparency and government adherence to the federal Freedom of Information Act was under scrutiny at a U.S. Senate Judiciary hearing Tuesday morning.

A U.S. District Court ruled that the FBI must release unredacted documents about Ronald Reagan to a journalist who has legally sought the information for the last 27 years in an attempt to prove that the former president was not only a bureau informant, but that the FBI assisted in his political career in return.

The Vermont Supreme Court ruled that police dispatch logs are not automatically exempt from public disclosure as investigation records under the state’s Access to Public Records Act.

The names of city of Long Beach police officers involved in shootings are subject to disclosure under the California Open Records Act, a California appeals court ruled this week.

The Second Appellate Court District upheld a lower court's finding that the release of the names of Long Beach police officers who were involved in shootings was not an invasion of privacy and the names were not protected as part of personnel or investigative files under the law.

The FBI cannot cite an exclusion provision related to confidential informants under the federal Freedom of Information Act regarding a request for records about civil rights era photographer Ernest Withers after the bureau was found to have officially confirmed Withers was an informant through a records release, a federal district court in Washington, D.C. ruled Tuesday.

Gawker and the New York Civil Liberties Union have filed a suit seeking records regarding an investigation conducted by the Nassau County Police Department on one of its' officers -- an investigation the popular website alleges was prompted by Fox News journalist Bill O'Reilly who suspected his wife had an affair with the officer.