Filed a federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, but ran into a few bumps? The Society of Professional Journalists wants to help.

We know the process can be challenging, frustrating and sometimes confusing. We also know sometimes your only option is to obtain services from an attorney. Now, help from a FOIA attorney is just an email away. Send the following information to foia@spj.org:

• Your name
• Your best contact information
• Copy of your original FOIA request
• Current status of your request
• How we can help

Once you send the email, SPJ leaders will work with FOIA attorneys to connect you with a FOIA expert and resources to help.

The FOIA is a cornerstone of openness in our government; it compels federal agencies to yield millions of documents relating to government operations and performance. News organizations, scholars, and public interest groups use the FOIA to report information significant to public health and safety, and good governance.

SPJ hopes that by offering this resource, more journalists will be given the assistance they need to continue working as government watchdogs.

Lynn Walsh is a freelance journalist, creating content focused on government accountability, public access to information and freedom of expression issues. She’s also helping to rebuild trust between newsrooms and the public through the Trusting News Project. Follow her on Twitter or send her an email to collaborate on a possible project.

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Every week I do a roundup of the freedom of information stories around the Web. If you have an FOI story you want to share, send me an email or tweet me.

• TOP MUST READ: How an activist journalist’s commitment to a poor Chicago community led to a big FOIA win.

• FOIA requests to Federal Election Commission about the Internal Revenue Service Tea Party targeting scandal results in backlogs. What’s more, IRS emails reveal huge loophole in federal open-records practices

• Speaking of which: Want public documents from the IRS? OpenSecrets.org has a handy flow chart to show you how.

• In the world of delayed FOIA response excuses:  Dozens of public information requests filed with a New York City’s county sheriff went unseen because they were being diverted to outdated email addresses.

• A lawsuit filed by Florida’s largest teachers’ union and the case of a local teacher accused of producing and distributing child pornography have put a spotlight on a controversial statewide program that allows students to attend private schools on the public’s dime — but doesn’t hold those schools to the same standards and level of transparency required of public schools.

• The argument for why philanthropic non-profit foundations for colleges — designed to supply the school extra funding in times of state budget cuts — should open their books. This editorial is why the University of Connecticut Foundation should be more transparent.

• Journalism groups appealed a decision Thursday that is keeping thousands of pages of documents from full public view in litigation over an investigation into groups supporting Gov. Scott Walker.

• A rejected FOIA request gives ProPublic reporters a whole other scoop.

• The Electronic Privacy Information Center has sued the United States Customs and Border Protection to compel the agency to produce documents relating to a relatively new comprehensive intelligence database of people and cargo crossing the U.S. border.

• New Jersey judge rules that state agency wrongly denied an open records request for open records request logs.

• All the critical material in an 81-page 2011 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s opinion on NSA surveillance has been declassified and made public, a federal judge ruled, rejecting the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s request for an unredacted copy.

• The Des Moines Register wins access to video and audio records of a Taser death incident under a settlement reached Tuesday with the Iowa Department of Public Safety.

• Small business websites being sued for publishing open records.

• Clerks in one central Illinois town got so bogged down with requests from one person that they spent most of their days searching for and copying records.

• House Republicans and Senate Democrats may finally have found something on which they both agree needs improvement: transparency.

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David Schick is the summer 2014 Pulliam/Kilgore Freedom of Information intern for SPJ,  reporting and researching public records and FOI issues. Contact him at dschick@spj.org or interact on Twitter: @davidcschick

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Special congrats to the FOIA advocacy website MuckRock, they got a shout out from the Daily Show this week for one of their FOIA requests:

• New Mexico’s Veteran’s Administration insists that its own congressional delegation file an official Freedom of Information Act request in order to learn more about its health care policies.

• FOIA find: Apple’s top legal executive points the finger at Google a week after it settled charges, brought by the Federal Trade Commission, that it failed to provide adequate disclosures for in-app transactions. In an email Apple urged the FTC to investigate Google for similar issues in Android.

• The City of Ann Arbor now publishes its FOIA request log online — no need for official request.

• The City of Albuquerque changes its records policy — announcing that will charge no more than $6.75 for DVDs and $2.75 for CDs for public records requests — in response to complaints.

• Local Pennsylvania county government ordered to release an unredacted report on county government prepared by a private investigator.

• Wisconsin State Senator turns to the Attorney General to compel the Government Accountability Board to open up its books after it applied that open records laws do not apply to it.

• Barely a week after Riverside launched a new Web portal with information on city finances, police and fire calls, and access to thousands of other records, the portal has been viewed nearly 16,000 times.

• If you ask for copies of public records from North Canton, Ohio, you’ll be waiting on snail mail because they refuse to email them to you.

• A hopeful Wyoming Governor promises to prohibit her employees the use of a public records “loophole,” known as the deliberative process privilege, if elected.

• Boston Globe reporter looks at campaign finance data and finds that Massachusetts candidates spent thousands of dollars a year on coffee and doughnuts.

• Opinion: The new bipartisan FOIA reform doesn’t go far enough. Congress should exempt Environmental Protection Agency from FOIA b(5).

• New Mexico has a new plan to give wider public access to court records via Web database.

• Virginia Supreme Court ordered the nonprofit Energy & Environment Legal Institute to pay $250 in damages to a former University of Virginia professor and the school following the institute’s failed legal bid to obtain emails regarding climate change research via FOIA.

• US Department of State denies FOIA request for emails of former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden, citing that it could be an “unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”

• New members of Olympia, Washington city councils, county commissions, school boards, fire commissions and special districts as well as statewide elected officials will be required to take FOIA and open meetings training.

• Bad FOIA news: South Carolina Supreme Court rules that autopsy reports are not public records.

• Interesting twist, two Rhode Island state agencies are being sued by the state’s own Attorney General for failing to respond to a reporter open records act request.

• Government transparency expert Eric Gillespie, founder and CEO of Govini, has been appointed to the newly formed FOIA Advisory Committee and will chair the subcommittee on proactive disclosure.

• CIA refuses to hand over its records on notorious East German Stasi head Erich Mielke.

• Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general released an audit that concluded the agency did not show bias in denying fee waivers on open-records requests from conservative-leaning groups while approving those from liberal-leaning groups.

• Check out how federal agencies fared in this Freedom of Information report card.

•  Watchdog.org resorts to FOIA request for info on immigraiton crisis, claims Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe is stonewalling and not returning press calls.

• The ACLU is criticizing Washington D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray for unprecedented delays in turning over data sought by the public through Freedom of Information Act requests.

• FOIA lawsuit dismissed after Michigan Attorney General releases documents sought by T.V. news crew (don’t know if I’d call this a win, it saddens me that it takes a lawsuit to force compliance).

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David Schick is the summer 2014 Pulliam/Kilgore Freedom of Information intern for SPJ,  reporting and researching public records and FOI issues. Contact him at dschick@spj.org or interact on Twitter: @davidcschick

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• A CIA employee with the highest level of security clearance tried to get the agency to release info that was a decade old. They told him no, so he submitted a FOIA request and it “destroyed his entire career.”

• Residents of Ann Arbor, Mich., submitted more FOIA requests than their own local news media.

• How the FOIA Improvement Act of 2014 would help ordinary requesters.

• California has a decades-old law that restricts public access to viewing records of water wells.

• The Center for Investigative Reporting is collecting ideas on how to improve the FOIA request process. Have ideas? Fill out the form here.

• Two local activist groups file suit against a Florida county claiming that the commission skirted state open-government laws in allowing a controversial business park to go forward.

• Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council is reviewing each one of its 100 plus exemptions in its states FOI act to determine whether or not it is needed.

• After FOIA suffers setback due to South Carolina Supreme Court ruling, editorial urges public officials not to use FOI ruling as a means to shut the public out of government affairs.

• 20-year-old Rwandan genocide documents withheld under B(5) FOIA exemption forces researchers to look abroad for transparency.

• Illinois High School Association resists calls for greater transparency in its handling of extracurricular activities and the millions of dollars they generate each year.

• North Carolina State University official claims the state’s open records law is costing them opportunities for research contracts.

• An Oklahoma city, which was ordered to pay attorneys’ fees in an Open Records Act case last year, is again facing another lawsuit over its alleged failure to provide documents under the law.

• U.S. federal judge orders the Internal Revenue Service to explain how it “lost” two years worth of a former IRS official Lois Lerner’s emails.

• Why I love FOIA: Department of Homeland Security released hundreds of pages of documents not related to original request for “Operation Aurora attack on Google,” but instead provides info on the Aurora project run at Idaho National Lab years earlier in which engineers destroyed a generator with a cyber attack as a demonstration

• Which U.S. agencies sprung for the extra legroom provided by first class? MuckRock obtained Agency Premium Travel Reports, which show how millions in upgrade fees were spent from 2009-2013.

• In case you missed it, FBI released documents in May showing they had spied on Nelson Mandela during his first trip to the United States in 1990, four months after his release from 27 years in prison. Now, new documents show that Mandela’s release triggered FBI anti-communist paranoia.

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David Schick is the summer 2014 Pulliam/Kilgore Freedom of Information intern for SPJ,  reporting and researching public records and FOI issues. Contact him at dschick@spj.org or interact on Twitter: @davidcschick

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• Two senators are proposing the most significant reforms to the Freedom of Information Act in four decades

• We’ve got a journalist at the adult table! Andrew Becker, reporter for the Center for Investigative Reporting, will be serving on the federal FOIA Modernization Advisory Committee to, let’s hope, make FOIA stronger for journalists and the public.

• FOIA from the “budget” perspective answers the following questions: How much are we spending on FOIA oversight? How does that compare to the costs of litigation? How much does the government spend on FOIA administration overall.

• The FBI’s 83-page guide to Twitter shorthand. FMTYEWTK (Far More Than You Ever Wanted To Know).

• “Existence or Nonexistence” was written in a sky message over New York City to mock a CIA response to a FOIA request that said the agency can “neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence” of records responsive to the request.

• A federal judge ruled that the Freedom of Information Act trumps an Internal Revenue Service policy for handling data requests after an advocacy group, Public.Resource.Org, filed a lawsuit against the IRS to make Form 990 returns available in a format that can be read by computers so the public can more easily search them for critical information about non-profit finances, governance and programs.

• An Oklahoma County judge ruled that Gov. Mary Fallin can lawfully withhold public documents — relating to a decision on Obamacare  — which are covered by a “deliberative process” privilege.

• The Florida Supreme Court will hear a case regarding the payment of attorney fees to a local activist who challenged the Jacksonville Police and Fire Pension Fund over public record laws and won (but not attorney’s fees).

• A bill “rushed through” the Illinois General Assembly spring session is drawing the ire of a good-government group that contends it will restrict the ability of citizens to get information about their governments.

• Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy proposes new legislation to open up Vermont’s FOIA laws, but the governor wants no part in that.

• In response to a long-running FOIA lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, U.S. releases “targeted killing” memo.

• Tulsa World editorial calls for the legislature to strike down the “deliberative process” exemption. A judge recently ruled that Governor Mary Fallin was allowed to withhold 100 pages out of 51,000 concerning her state’s decision on the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.

• North Carolina legislators are proposing legislation that will prevent the public from accessing mugshots.

• Pennsylvania court backs the power of its state’s Open Records Office to order governments to surrender records for private review — to determine whether they should or shouldn’t be released to the public

• The “FOIA Warriors” (Jason Leopold and Ryan Shapiro) are at it again and have filed a lawsuit against the CIA compelling the agency to release documents about its spying on Senate lawmakers who were tasked with investigating CIA torture.

• The National Rifle Association is happy about a new Michigan law that exempts gun records from public disclosure.

• Massachusetts SWAT teams claim they’re private corporations and immune from open records laws.

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David Schick is the summer 2014 Pulliam/Kilgore Freedom of Information intern for SPJ,  reporting and researching public records and FOI issues. Contact him at dschick@spj.org or interact on Twitter: @davidcschick

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Every week I’ll be doing a round up of the freedom of information stories around the Web. If you have an FOI story you want to share, send me an email or tweet me.

• If you read only one FOI story, it should be this one: The Secret to Getting Top-Secret Secrets: How a journalist with a dark past learned to pry info from the government—and redeemed himself in the process.

• After transparency bill is “gutted,” the University of Delaware and Delaware State University can rest easy knowing their public record exemptions will remain intact. Thoughts from Adam Goldstein, Student Press Law Center attorney advocate: ‘It does a Texas Chainsaw Massacre on the law.’

• The Associated Press reports that the White House has been quietly advising local police not to disclose details about the Stingray surveillance technology they are using to sweep up basic cellphone data from entire neighborhoods. Let’s not forget that in recent weeks the Chicago Police is being sued for failing to provide Stingray records, and U.S. Marshals raided a local Florida police department to prevent the release of those same type of records. (Anyone seeing a trend? Or is it just me?)

• In the above link about the document seizure by the U.S. Marshals, the American Civil Liberties Union filed an emergency motion to try and claw back those records, but the judge dismissed it.

• FOIA request reveals brutal photos of seals, dolphins, whales, and other sea life that were caught in California commercial fishing boats that use drift gillnets — one mile-long mesh nets that are intended to catch swordfish.

• Documents obtained via FOIA request show that St. Clair County in Illinois spent more than $3.3 million in settlements behind close doors. A huge range of settlements from $900,000 to a teenager who was allegedly sexually abused at the county’s Juvenile Detention Center to $1,000 to a person claiming injuries when placed under arrest by sheriff’s deputies.

• What have we lost since 9/11? A lot of the First Amendment, including the good ol’ days of the Freedom of Information Act.

• The Kentucky Court of Appeals has affirmed a Circuit Court decision paving the way for public access to court records related to a public official’s job performance and the contentious relationship she had with the former president of a local community college.

• An appeals court backs a man who made an anonymous public records request. The court ruled that the city of Greenacres, Fla., could not require the man to fill out a form before obtaining the documents.

• Ex-offenders in Forest Park, IL — who qualify to work with volunteer attorneys — filed petitions to seal their criminal records, which would remove them from public access (but at least the information can still be seen by government bodies and police departments /sarcasm).

• Reporter wonders why the Department of Education is “being so opaque” on student loan data, after filing multiple FOIA requests with “less than optimal” results.

• St. Louis police records released per a judge’s order in public records lawsuit show how vice and other drug officers scalped the scalpers. Fifteen police officers were either suspended and demoted or otherwise disciplined for giving St. Louis Cardinals’ championship tickets seized from scalpers to friends and family.

• This FOIA lawsuit could open up IRS data on nonprofits, making it more accessible.

• FOIA lawsuit win: Judge rules against a Washington state police department for wrongfully invoking the law enforcement exemption when it withheld records last year.

• The Miami Herald questions the Department of Children & Families’ “paperless” investigation into why there were originally no records — “no reports, memos, notes, emails or smoke signals” —  of the deaths of at least 30 children who were in DCF’s active case files.

• New Oklahoma law removes an Open Records Act loophole for state troopers. Since 2005, the Highway Patrol was exempt from dash cam requirement to make audio and video recordings available to the public.

• The Federal Bureau of Prisons is being sued for FOIA violations by Prisology, a non-profit criminal justice reform organization. They claim that the FBOP has been non-compliant with the law, which has required for decades the Bureau post online substantial information about its day-to-day decision-making.

• A call to improve Arkansas public records laws: “Arkansas’s FOIA is not a bad FOIA. That doesn’t mean it is not in need of improvement.”

• Open records law rewrite would expand disclosure rules on Penn State, Pitt, Temple and Lincoln universities. Currently, they enjoy a broad exemption, which allows them to deny most public records requests.

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David Schick is the summer 2014 Pulliam/Kilgore Freedom of Information intern for SPJ,  reporting and researching public records and FOI issues. Contact him at dschick@spj.org or interact on Twitter: @davidcschick

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• City of Gainesville in Florida opens up its City Commissioners’ emails, making the documents available via an online database with no need for a FOIA request.

• Alaskan Dispatch asks Governor Sean Parnell to veto a new bill that would “impose unprecedented restrictions on Alaskans’ access to public records” by making court records secret. The op-ed says the bill will cause information already in the public domain to become confidential.

• Shane Bauer, a reporter for Mother Jones, wants to know: What did my government do when I was taken hostage in Iran? Bauer filed a FOIA lawsuit against the FBI, CIA, and State Department to release records that will show how it dealt with his — and other journalists’ — imprisonment.

• A new bill in North Carolina seeks to remove the requirements that require charter schools to comply with open records and open meetings laws.

• A Circuit Court Judge will decide on whether text messages exchanged between government officials need to be released under FOIA in a lawsuit filed by PETA. The first defense the city of Norfolk, Virginia, offered was that its public employees don’t save their messages, then it said there was no way of retrieving them. Maybe their next excuse will be, “The dog ate ’em.”

• Cayman Islands legislator says trying to get answers about the government’s open records process is like “climbing a lime tree backwards.” Also wonders if information managers are trained to delay.

• Wisconsin Judge orders the release of records previously protected by a secrecy order. The documents are related to an investigation into the governor’s aides, which led to the convictions of six individuals including two Gov. Walker aides, an appointee and a major campaign contributor.

• A Tennessee appeals court listened to arguments in the legal dispute over records access in the Vanderbilt University rape case, which led to charges against four former football players.

• Newspaper fought to “touch” public records related to a college dean’s sexual harassment claim against a female provost he claims inappropriately “touched” him for years.

• Remember that Michigan bill that would keep gun records confidential and exempt from open records? It’s heading to the governor’s desk for signature.

• Delaware bill seeks to end the public records exemptions of the University of Delaware and Delaware State University. The two schools have successfully evaded open records requests for years.

• According to FOIA documents, the U.S. Army profiled nonviolent protesters, classifying them as terror threats to FBI and police in multiple states, to “deliberately disrupt planned protests and prevent activists from exercising their First Amendment rights.”

• FOI advocacy groups want to close loop holes in FOIA regulations. Advocates say “agencies lack penalties for withholding information, overuse exemptions provided within FOIA and deal inconsistently and unfairly toward requesters.”

• After 10,000 requests, MuckRock files FOIA lawsuit against the CIA. You can read all about in their editorial, “Why we’re suing the CIA.”

• The Salinas Police Department is refusing to release names of officers involved in fatal shootings of suspects. And I thought the California Supreme Court just ruled “names should generally be public” (oh, right, they did).

• FOIA request filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation reveals FBI’s Next Generation Identification facial recognition program will consist of a database of more than 52 million pictures. FBI Director says he doesn’t think the agency will spy on Americans with it. (Apparently he missed the memo from the NSA.)

• Chicago Police Department is being sued for failing to provide Stingray surveillance records. Let’s hope that the U.S. Marshals don’t swoop in and snag the files like they did in Florida.

• How a FOIA request may yield “more comprehensive results” than a subpoena.

• U.S. Bureau of Land Management is being sued by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a public land advocacy group, to release public documents on the agency’s handling of the armed standoff with Southern Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy.

• A test of Ohio’s response to open records requests shows that they are better than they were 10 years ago. So that’s nice.

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David Schick is the summer 2014 Pulliam/Kilgore Freedom of Information intern for SPJ,  reporting and researching public records and FOI issues. Contact him at dschick@spj.org or interact on Twitter: @davidcschick

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Every week I’ll be doing a round up of the freedom of information stories around the Web. If you have an FOI story you want to share, send me an email or tweet me.

• Records show that federal employees spend an average of two hours a day surfing for porn — Wash your hands after you touch these public records.

• How can you get open records from private colleges? Find federal agencies they report to and request records: Internal Harvard report, obtained via FOIA request, shines light on ex-researcher’s misconduct.

• Emails from the National Security Agency show how top officials strategized to withhold records related to Edward Snowden’s leaks.

• California Supreme Court makes landmark ruling: Names of police officers in shootings should usually be public.

• Despite two FOIA lawsuits, the Federal Aviation Administration continues to evade FOIA requests related to government agencies that applied for drone flying waivers.

• Chicago Headline Club (an SPJ chapter) urges Illinois Governor Pat Quinn to veto HB 3796. Adds yet another barrier, in the form of a “Voluminous Requests” exemption, to open records access.

• Electronic Frontier Foundation dukes it out with the Justice Department in court hearings. EFF sued the Justice Department for access to records showing opinions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which found some of the NSA’s domestic telephone surveillance unconstitutional.

• And a New York Times reporter is also trying to get documents about the U.S. secret surveillance court in his latest FOIA lawsuit against the Department of Justice.

• Department of Justice brags that it is closer than ever to comply with the Freedom of Information Act. Take a look at some of their “successes.”

• Interesting FOIA obstruction tactic: ACLU requests records from Florida police regarding stingray surveillance and U.S. Marshals swept into the police offices to whisk away records.

• Illinois Supreme Court opens up the state’s attorneys to increased public scrutiny, rules that offices of the state’s attorneys are subject to FOIA.

• Michigan House of Representatives passes bill affirming the confidentiality of gun records and keeps them exempt from FOIA. The bill codifies a 1999 Michigan Supreme Court Decision that gun records disclosure was “a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual’s privacy.”

• Investigative Reporters & Editors have an awesome FOI podcast, aptly named FOIA Frustrations​. You should listen to it.

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David Schick is the summer 2014 Pulliam/Kilgore Freedom of Information intern for SPJ,  reporting and researching public records and FOI issues. Contact him at dschick@spj.org or interact on Twitter: @davidcschick

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Every week I’ll be doing a round up of the freedom of information stories around the Web. If you have an FOI story you want to share, send me an email or tweet me.

• The Center for Public Integrity is suing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for failing to release public documents under the Freedom of Information Act. The Center claims they’ve been trying to obtain “a wide range of records concerning oversight of Medicare Advantage health insurance plans for senior citizens” for more than a year.

• And this is why we have FOIA: Botched nuclear silo drill revealed by The Associated Press.

• U.S. Customs and Border Protection repeatedly refuses to release independent report on use of force to The Center for Investigative Reporting under FOIA.

• “You don’t start a dialogue with FOIA requests”: Students upset with University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock’s “defense of laws requiring governments to accommodate controversial religious views” have sent an FOI request for correspondence between the professor and organizations that oppose same-sex marriage. And more on that from Will Creeley, public advocate for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, who suggests the FOIA request threatens academic freedom.

• Six years after requesting salary information on city employees, U-T San Diego finally received public documentation.

• The FBI will release “thousands of investigative files” the agency had on folk singer Pete Seeger after dozens of journalists and “curious members of the public” requested his files under the Freedom of Information Act.

• This is what happens when two public entities, Georgia State University and Georgia Public Broadcasting — both subject to FOI requests — orchestrate a secret deal to take over a student radio station. Detailed emails about their back-room deals surface.

• In response to a FOIA lawsuit, FBI released documents showing they had spied on Nelson Mandela during his first trip to the United States in 1990, four months after his release from 27 years in prison.

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David Schick is the summer 2014 Pulliam/Kilgore Freedom of Information intern for SPJ,  reporting and researching public records and FOI issues. Contact him at dschick@spj.org or interact on Twitter: @davidcschick

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Every week I’ll be doing a round up of the freedom of information stories around the web. If you’ve got a FOI story you want to share send me an email or tweet me.

Wisconsin court ruling is a real danger to open records. It’s a big problem giving government officials the right to “consider the intentions of people who file open records request when deciding whether to fill them.”

The joy of public records — You can’t make this stuff up… No spoilers on this one, you just have to click it.

It took four months to redact a majority of a top-secret Pentagon report conducted to determine the damage done by the NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden. It concluded that “the scope of the compromised knowledge related to US intelligence capabilities is staggering.”

The FOIA Project just uploaded 97 new FOIA court documents, plus case descriptions. No need to pay for a PACER account now.

Federal Appeals Court ruling says that the CIA can keep their 50-year-old internal account of the Bay of Pigs secret indefinitely.

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David Schick is the summer 2014 Pulliam/Kilgore Freedom of Information intern for SPJ,  reporting and researching public records and FOI issues. Contact him at dschick@spj.org or interact on Twitter: @davidcschick

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