They say freedom isn't free. And that's certainly true of FOIA requests.
Under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, any citizen has the right to request non-classified documents from any agency in the executive branch. But if these requests are deemed outside the "public interest," agencies may charge steep fees to fulfill them. And even if your wallet is spared, the process will certainly eat into your time.
FOIA requests can be painfully complex. The rules vary from state to state -- and from agency to agency. Sometimes, you need a lawyer to navigate the labyrinthine procedures and exemptions, and that means, well, more fees.
But a group of journalists at the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) aims to ease these burdens, building a "Machine" that seeks to automate the FOIA process. They call it a "TurboTax for government records."
The FOIA Machine was started by a veteran investigative journalist named Djordje Padejski. "For years," he says, "I've been thinking about how to improve the process." He started work on the project as a Knight Fellow at Stanford University in 2012, and later, he joined forces with a group of CIR journalists who were building a tool called BirdDog, which sought to rate agencies based on how well they fulfilled FOIA requests.
To understand how the FOIA Machine works, you must first understand how requests were made in the past. Let's say you wanted some information about a particular contract from the Environmental Protection Agency. You would start with a visit to the EPA's website, trying to figure out whom you needed to contact. Then, once you found the right person, you'd have to figure out how to craft your request.
"A journalist might say, 'I want all the communication details,'" Padejski explains. "But you need to be more specific." That's the only way to get results. What's more, if you made dozens of requests at the same time, you needed some way of keeping track of it all.
The FOIA machine seeks to solve all these problems. It offers a database of FOIA contacts, and it includes a number of forms meant to help first-timers craft precise requests that have a good chance of being fulfilled. For veteran FOIA requesters, the site also provides quick access to any state- and agency-specific rules you need to be aware of.
But the team wants to add more, so they turned to Kickstarter to raise additional money for development. They've already reached their fundraising goal, and soon, the software will be able to integrate with your email to help you track the progress of your requests, says lead developer Shane Shifflett, a programmer turned journalist with extensive experience making FOIA requests. They're also working on other tools, including one that will let you share your requests publicly.
WIRED knows the headaches of Freedom of Information Act all too well. Just last week, MIT filed a motion to block a request from investigations editor Kevin Poulsen for access to Secret Service documents relating to the Aaron Swartz case.
"It sounds like a worthwhile project, but filing a FOIA isn't the hard part," Poulsen says of the FOIA Machine. "Getting the government to take the FOIA seriously is the hard part. I'd love to see a machine that can fix that."
Padejski agrees. But he hopes that the project's forthcoming social tools will make it possible for people to rally around particular requests. "The only thing that can make government take FOIA seriously is group of people behind it, the power of the crowd," he says. "Can you imagine how an agency will treat a request if it gets the support of hundreds of people?"
