Freedon Of Information Requests

[Yak]

I was wondering, has anyone on the forum tried to get hold of blueprints and/or technical information about their favourite secret project vie the Freedon Of Information Act in the U.S.?

At a gues I would think that to file one of these there would be a hell of a lot of paperwork.

What do you think? Worth a look or more pain that any possible gain?

 

[sublight]

The national declassification center asked the public to vote on what kind of stuff people wanted declassified, I posted here trying to get people interested in getting more paper on their favorite platforms but nobody responded. http://www.archives.gov/declassification/

If they have another public input request I will post it here. This is their current declassification plan:

http://www.archives.gov/declassification/final-prioritization-plan.pdf

Maybe there are some nuggets in there?

 

[Orionblamblam]

At a gues I would think that to file one of these there would be a hell of a lot of paperwork.

Nope. Basically you write one short letter and the process is underway, if you already know what report you're looking for. If you *don't* know what report you're looking for, but instead want information on, say, the BoeLockMartLorNorGrum Model 47X, you write one letter asking for a bibliographic printout of whatever DTIC may have on the BoeLockMartLorNorGrum Model 47X. Then a few weeks/months later it shows up in the mail; you read through it to find any reports that look good, and then you write a letter requestign *those.* Then anywhere from weeks to years later, they show up. Or don't.

The process is pretty much the same for NASA FOIA.

If you're a US citizen, there's not a whole lot of paperwork. There's also not a whole lot you can do to either speed up the process or make sure it turns out your way, unless you have yourself a pet Senator.

 

[quellish]

I was wondering, has anyone on the forum tried to get hold of blueprints and/or technical information about their favourite secret project vie the Freedon Of Information Act in the U.S.?

At a gues I would think that to file one of these there would be a hell of a lot of paperwork.

What do you think? Worth a look or more pain that any possible gain?

The process isn't too bad. It helps to know exactly what you are looking for, and provide as much helpful information as you can in your request. It took about 4 months to get results from my RQ-170 related requests, and about 6-7 months for a set of requests related to ZENITH STAR. The turnaround time can vary a lot. In the 90s I made several requests that had them calling me back within two weeks.

 

[blackstar]

What do you think? Worth a look or more pain that any possible gain?

Don't do it for no reason. If you're going to make a request, have a plan to actually do something with the info, like write about it if the material is interesting. There are people who make a nuisance of themselves filing requests because they have an ideological belief that the information "should be public." They file lots of requests, get lots of government employees to spend lots of time (and money) digging up stuff for them, then they don't do anything with it. This then slows down the response time for people with legitimate requests, such as researching a book or a dissertation or something like that. (I seem to remember hearing that for some government agencies, something like 90% of the requests come from no more than 4-5 people.)

So don't just file a request because you're curious. Remember that this costs US taxpayers money.