FOIA News: Nominations sought for FOIA Advisory Commitee

The Office of Government Information Services is seeking nominees to serve on the federal FOIA Advisory Committee for the 2024-2026 term, per a notice published in the Federal Register on June 6, 2024. The deadline for applications is July 15, 2024, at 5:00 pm ET. See the aforementioned notice for more details. The final meeting of the Committe’s 2022-2024 term will take place on June 13, 2024.

FOIA News: Audio of Biden interview exempt on privacy and other grounds, asserts DOJ in court filing

DOJ fears AI tampering with Biden-Hur audio

The department, in a court filing late Friday night, warned that releasing the audio could lead to it being “improperly altered.”

By Jordain Carney, Politico, June 1, 2024

The Justice Department is seizing on an increasingly common fear as it fights to prevent the release of the audio of President Joe Biden’s interview with former special counsel Robert Hur: It could spawn deepfakes.

The concern — raised as part of an overnight court filing late Friday — is the latest step in a multi-pronged legal battle aimed at forcing the Justice Department to release the audio, which Biden claimed executive privilege over last month.

“The passage of time and advancements in audio, artificial intelligence, and ‘deep fake’ technologies only amplify concerns about malicious manipulation of audio files. If the audio recording is released here, it is easy to foresee that it could be improperly altered, and that the altered file could be passed off as an authentic recording and widely distributed,” the department wrote in a 49-page filing.

Read more here.

FOIA News: Illinois congressman re-introduces transparency bill

On June 3, 2024, U.S. Representative Mike Quigley (IL-05) re-introduced the Transparency in Government Act, H.R. 8597. Although the text of the bill is not yet available, his press release indicates that it contains a number of FOIA-related items. Specifically, the bill will reportedly do the following:

• Strengthen the Freedom of Information Act by requiring agencies to put all completed FOIA requests online in a searchable, sortable, and downloadable format.

• Strengthen agencies' FOIA officers' ability to access unclassified agency records.

• Institute new transparency measures to document FOIA requests and compliance. 

FOIA Advisor will provide updates on the progress of this legislation.

FOIA News: Panel discussion on GAO's FOIA backlog report

On June 25, 2024, the General Counsel of OPEXUS, a leader in government case management software, will host three agency officials to discuss the Government Accountability Office’s March 2024 report on FOIA backlogs. Entitled “Beat the Backlog: Decoding the GAO FOIA Report to Make a Difference in the Last Quarter of Your Program,” the discussion will include Jay McTigue, Director of Strategic Issues at GAO and author of the GAO’s 2024 FOIA report; Michael Sarich, FOIA Director at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs; and Alina Semo, Director at the Office of Government Information Services at NARA. 

See here for more details about the event.

FOIA News: OGIS post on Advisory Committee's next meeting

Plan to Attend Final FOIA Advisory Committee Meeting of the Fifth Term

By Kimberlee N. Ried, FOIA Ombudsman, May 28, 2024

The last meeting of the 2022-2024 term of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Advisory Committee is on Thursday, June 13, 2024, beginning at 10 a.m. ET. The Committee expects to review and approve its final report which will include 16 previously passed recommendations from the three subcommittees, Implementation, Modernization and Resources. All meeting materials will be posted on the FOIA Advisory Committee website.

Read more here.

FOIA News: Agency misspelled words to circumvent FOIA requests, House panel alleges

Health Officials Tried to Evade Public Records Laws, Lawmakers Say

N.I.H. officials suggested federal record keepers helped them hide emails. If so, “that’s really damaging to trust in all of government,” one expert said.

By Benjamin Mueller, NY Times, May 28, 2024

House Republicans on Tuesday accused officials at the National Institutes of Health of orchestrating “a conspiracy at the highest levels” of the agency to hide public records related to the origins of the Covid pandemic. And the lawmakers promised to expand an investigation that has turned up emails in which senior health officials talked openly about trying to evade federal records laws.

The latest accusations — coming days before a House panel publicly questions Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a former top N.I.H. official — represent one front of an intensifying push by lawmakers to link American research groups and the country’s premier medical research agency with the beginnings of the Covid pandemic.

That push has so far yielded no evidence that American scientists or health officials had anything to do with the coronavirus outbreak. But the House panel, the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, has released a series of private emails that suggest at least some N.I.H. officials deleted messages and tried to skirt public records laws in the face of scrutiny over the pandemic.

Read more here.

FOIA News: ICYMI, OIP updates litigation sections of FOIA Guide

On February 27, 2024, the Office of Information Policy posted updated versions of Litigation Considerations Part 1 and Litigation Considerations Part 2 of the Department of Justice Guide to the Freedom of Information Act. In 2023, OIP updated three Guide sections: “Reverse FOIA,” “Exemption 2,” and “Exemption 5.” The Guide’s remaining 20 sections were last revised between 2020 and 2022.

FOIA News: More coverage on FOIA controversy at NIH

• By Liz Jassin, Did NIH official hide COVID-19 records?, The Hill, May 23, 2024

• By Dan Diamond & McKenzie Beard, A Fauci Advisor Deleted Emails. Congress Demanded To Know Why, Wash. Post, May 23, 2024.

• By Mandy Taheri, Biggest Bombshells From New Fauci COVID Emails, Newsweek, May 23, 2024 (updated May 24, 2024).

• (Opinion) By Mark Tapscott, Now Will the FOIA Get Some Real Teeth?, PJ Media, May 23, 2024.

FOIA News: Mark your calendars for NARA/OGIS events

Registration is now open for the final federal FOIA Advisory Committee meeting of the 2022-2024 term, which will be held virtually on on June 13, 2024. See more details here.

On July 24, 2024, the Office of Government Information Services will host its annual open meeting. Agenda and meeting materials are expected to be available in July.

FOIA News: NIH advisor evaded FOIA with agency's help, says House report

Explosive emails show top NIH adviser deleted records, used ‘secret’ back channels to help Fauci evade COVID transparency

By Josh Christenson, NY Post, May 22, 2024

A top adviser at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) deleted records critical to uncovering the origins of COVID-19 — and used a “secret back channel” to help Dr. Anthony Fauci and a federal grantee that funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China, evade transparency.

NIH senior adviser Dr. David Morens improperly conducted official government business from his private email account and solicited help from the NIH’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) office to dodge records requests, according to emails revealed in a memo by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, which The Post obtained Wednesday.

“[I] learned from our foia [sic] lady here how to make emails disappear after I am foia’d [sic] but before the search starts,” Morens wrote in a Feb. 24, 2021, email. “Plus I deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail [sic].”

Read more here.