December 4, 2020

Featured Resource: How to FOIA

In 2019, the UWCHR celebrated its 10th anniversary. As a part of the celebration, I facilitated a public FOIA training workshop, and rewrote the training manual to be relevant to a wider audience looking to do public interest research. The manual, How to FOIA,  was published by UW Pressbooks and provides guidelines on how to file Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, highlighting an important tool for human rights activists and anyone conducting research on the U.S. federal government. How to FOIA, is a free step-by-step guide for beginners about how to file FOIA requests, including examples. The guide traces the process from developing an idea, drafting, and submitting the request all the way through the appeal process.

What is the FOIA?

The FOIA is a law that was passed by congress in 1966 that allows any person (U.S. citizen or not) to request information from the United States federal government. The law says that anyone has a right to all government information, except for nine different reasons, or exemptions. The exemptions include, for example, a prohibition of releasing information that would threaten national security, violate the privacy of an individual, interfere with law enforcement investigations, divulge information about the U.S.’s nuclear facilities, or share trade secrets.

While the FOIA provides opportunity for broad access to government information, each presidential administration chooses to interpret the law in a more broad or narrow scope. For example, President Obama, upon his inauguration, passed an executive order that called for the adoption of a “presumption of disclosure,” so the default was to release the documents unless an exemption prohibited it. The more limited interpretation would encourage the withholding of all information unless it was required to be released.

Why is the FOIA important?

Even one of the most secretive of U.S. government agencies, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) declares on its website that public access to government information is necessary “to ensure an informed citizenry, vital to the functioning of a democratic society.” While the FOIA allows public oversight of the government and is a key tool in holding the government accountable, it only works if people use it. Through decades of every-day people requesting information and groups pursuing strategic litigation, the FOIA law strengthens, as does the rights of the people to access information through the law.

The FOIA can be used in many different ways to provide public oversight and hold the U.S. federal government accountable for what it does with our tax dollars. Here are some examples:

• Environmental activism: Federal and Local Law Enforcement coordination to counter Dakota Access Pipeline protests;
• Racial justice: surveillance of Black Lives Matter protests;
• Immigrants’ rights advocacy: University of Washington Center for Human Rights investigates deportation flights in King County;
• International justice: Human Rights cases in Latin America, such as the case against former military official in El Salvador.

As an educational institution, the University of Washington—students, staff, and faculty—have an important opportunity and responsibility to submit FOIAs and provide analysis and public access to government records declassified through the FOIA. The use of the FOIA and publishing the results of requests is also an important opportunity for advancement of educational equity by serving the general public and making government information available to more people. One example is the University of Washington Center for Human Rights collection of records on El Salvador, obtained through the FOIA. Read more about this project and see the document collection here, housed in the UW Research Works platform.

One important benefit to publishing the How to FOIA book on UW Pressbooks is the use of the creative commons license which allows for free publishing and easy collaboration. Free access through Pressbooks ensures the knowledge created is accessible to more people and allows for the collaborative creation of new knowledge. How to FOIA is licensed under the Creative Commons license “attribution, non-commercial, share-alike,” which allows and encourages other people to rework and re-publish the guide for non-commercial purposes. The hope is that as others develop expertise in using the FOIA, they can also write more detailed guides for obtaining important information in their subject areas, such as environmentalism, human rights, racial justice, public health, international justice, immigration advocacy, and criminal justice reform, among others. By learning how to FOIA and sharing this knowledge with others, UW researchers can help increase transparency and access to information that is critical to advocacy and social justice efforts across all disciplines.

By learning how to FOIA and sharing this knowledge with others, UW researchers can help increase transparency and access to information that is critical to advocacy and social justice efforts across all disciplines.

How to FOIA is an excellent example of open scholarship in action. It not only sheds light on what has traditionally been a closed and complicated process but its open license allows it to be adapted and built upon as others work through the FOIA process and add their expertise, creating a rich resource. The UW Libraries is pleased offer support for the creation and open sharing of projects like How to FOIA. To learn more about how you might create an open project like this one, please visit the UW Libraries Open Scholarship Commons to see examples of open work, learn more about tools to publish your work openly, and to get support on creating your own project.

###