The Electronic Freedom Of Information Improvement Act

Today, transparency is a widely heralded value, and the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is often held up as one of the transparency movement’s canonical achievements. Yet while many view the law as a powerful tool for journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens to pursue the public good, FOIA is beset by massive backlogs, and corporations and the powerful have become adept at using it for their own interests. Close observers of laws like FOIA have begun to question whether these laws interfere with good governance, display a deleterious anti-public-sector bias, or are otherwise inadequate for the twenty-first century’s challenges. Troubling Transparency brings together leading scholars from different disciplines to analyze freedom of information policies in the United States and abroad—how they are working, how they are failing, and how they might be improved. Contributors investigate the creation of FOIA; its day-to-day uses and limitations for the news media and for corporate and citizen requesters; its impact on government agencies; its global influence; recent alternatives to the FOIA model raised by the emergence of “open data” and other approaches to transparency; and the theoretical underpinnings of FOIA and the right to know. In addition to examining the mixed legacy and effectiveness of FOIA, contributors debate how best to move forward to improve access to information and government functioning. Neither romanticizing FOIA nor downplaying its real and symbolic achievements, Troubling Transparency is a timely and comprehensive consideration of laws such as FOIA and the larger project of open government, with wide-ranging lessons for journalism, law, government, and civil society.

Contains an overview discussion of the Freedom of Information Act's (FOIA) exemptions, its law enforcement record exclusions, and its most important procedural aspects. 2009 edition. Issued biennially. Other related products: Report of the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, Pursuant to Public Law 236, 103d Congress can be found here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/052-071-01228-1 Overview of the Privacy Act of 1974, 2015 Edition can be found here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/027-000-01429-1

Use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the Privacy Act to obtain records from the federal government.

H.R. 12471, commonly referred to as the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Amendments of 1974 (Pub. L. No. 93-502, 88 Stat. 1561), was enacted into law on November 21, 1974. These amendments effected the first substantive changes to the FOIA since its initial enactment in 1966 (Pub. L. No. 89-487). The committee print linked below contains the text of documents comprising the legislative history of this law, including House and Senate committee reports and House and Senate Floor debate. It also contains U.S. Department of Justice memoranda regarding implementation of the Act by executive departments and agencies, as well as analyses prepared by the Library of Congress Congressional Research Service and committee staff. The U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedure, chaired by Senator Edward M. Kennedy (Massachusetts), prepared this document jointly with the U.S. House Government Operations Subcommittee on Government Information and Individual Rights, chaired by Representative Bella Abzug (New York). Senator James O. Eastland (Mississippi) chaired the full Senate committee and Representative Jack Brooks (Texas) chaired the full House committee.