Since its enactment almost 60 years ago, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has been updated multiple times, often in order to try to stop prior federal agency or department practices that thwarted the FOIA’s intended purpose: increased government transparency. Based on the experience of Cato and several news organizations and reporters, federal agencies and departments are now using a new tactic to discourage or thwart FOIA requests: ludicrously low document production schedules. Cato, Advanced Magazine Publishers, Bloomberg News, Buzzfeed News, and journalists Jason Leopold and Jimmy Tobias have all encountered this issue.
Specifically, the Departments of Justice, Defense (DoD), and Health and Human Services (HHS) as well as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) are refusing to process and release any more that 250 pages per month in FOIA lawsuits brought by the plaintiffs listed above. In the case of Justice components, and specifically the FBI, this represents a 100 percent reduction over their previous monthly document production schedule from just a year ago. A current Cato FOIA lawsuit against the FBI focused on Situational Information Reports (SIRs) produced by any Strategic Information Operations Center (SIOC) established between January 1, 2020, and January 31, 2021.
When the FBI believes that specific domestic incidents may lead to large sca.