[00:00.000 --> 00:01.060]  Let me and ask me if you want.
[00:04.280 --> 00:10.700]  We have a fascinating variety of people who put a whole lot of effort into making information available.
[00:10.880 --> 00:11.960]  We've heard an awful lot of those stories.
[00:12.200 --> 00:15.060]  This is another one of those stories that I know you're going to enjoy.
[00:15.340 --> 00:18.240]  It's the rummaging in the government attic.
[00:18.760 --> 00:22.240]  And this is with Michael and Phil.
[00:22.480 --> 00:23.140]  So please, go ahead.
[00:31.860 --> 00:32.560]  Thank you.
[00:33.020 --> 00:34.480]  My name is Phil Lapsley.
[00:34.840 --> 00:50.240]  And for the last several years, I've been researching a book on the history of phone phreaking actually presented on that topic at the last hope and I'll be presenting again tomorrow at noon on a related topic on cats and mice and history of phone phreaks and FBI and this sort of thing.
[00:50.620 --> 00:57.680]  But as one of the research tools for the book, I've filed a whole bunch of Freedom of Information Act requests with various federal agencies.
[00:58.160 --> 01:05.500]  And in the process, as I started looking at FOIA and how it relates to how I was trained as a hacker, I saw a lot of parallels.
[01:05.800 --> 01:13.180]  The guy that I learned more about FOIA than from any other source is this gentleman named Michael Ravnitzky, who is standing right here.
[01:13.400 --> 01:19.680]  And so he and I thought that we would talk to you today about how to file FOIA requests and what you can learn from them.
[01:19.800 --> 01:20.020]  Michael?
[01:21.340 --> 01:23.140]  My name is Michael Ravnitzky.
[01:23.440 --> 01:30.540]  And although I now work as an attorney in the communications field, for many years, I worked as a journalist investigative reporter.
[01:30.760 --> 01:34.140]  And as part of that, I use the Freedom of Information Act as a tool.
[01:34.560 --> 01:38.620]  And in doing so, over the years, I filed about 10,000 FOIA requests.
[01:39.100 --> 01:49.260]  And what came to my attention was that there were some folks that were filing FOIA requests and posting information and documents online at this website called Government Attic.
[01:49.260 --> 01:52.720]  And they're shy people, but they agreed to be interviewed by Phil and I.
[01:52.820 --> 01:56.720]  And we learned some interesting lessons, we hope, and we wanted to share them with you today.
[01:59.460 --> 02:03.560]  Imagine, if you will, a vast library of documents and records.
[02:04.520 --> 02:05.880]  Billions of documents.
[02:07.460 --> 02:08.880]  Every document the U.S. government has ever created, that database exists.
[02:13.600 --> 02:14.900]  It even has a name.
[02:16.020 --> 02:17.660]  It's called every document the U.S. government has ever created and hasn't gotten around to throwing out yet.
[02:21.800 --> 02:27.840]  You can query this database by using an obscure search engine, a powerful search engine called FOIA.
[02:29.900 --> 02:31.680]  FOIA is the Freedom of Information Act.
[02:32.380 --> 02:35.280]  There are many parallels, but there's also some differences.
[02:35.280 --> 02:36.800]  Google's electronic.
[02:37.120 --> 02:40.640]  FOIA is mostly paper, although it's changing to become more electronic.
[02:42.000 --> 02:43.460]  Google is based on the web.
[02:43.680 --> 02:45.340]  FOIA is based on the postal service.
[02:45.820 --> 02:53.080]  With Google, queries are instant, but with FOIA, the queries can take weeks, months, years, many years.
[02:53.860 --> 02:58.940]  With Google, the search algorithm is... the search engine is a computer with an algorithm.
[02:59.340 --> 03:03.800]  And with FOIA, the search engine is a team of humans who are usually helpful.
[03:04.640 --> 03:09.220]  They rely on computers too, and the information is spread through a whole number of places.
[03:10.000 --> 03:11.220]  Google tries to be helpful.
[03:11.820 --> 03:18.520]  FOIA tries to be helpful mostly, but it sometimes comes across as rather hostile, petulant, arbitrary.
[03:19.980 --> 03:22.560]  Every document in this database has two things in common.
[03:23.260 --> 03:25.880]  First, they were created with taxpayer money.
[03:26.040 --> 03:26.600]  They're yours.
[03:26.920 --> 03:28.520]  They're put away, but they're yours.
[03:28.960 --> 03:33.160]  And every document in this database sheds some light on what the government's up to.
[03:35.400 --> 03:38.660]  But those documents stay hidden unless you ask for them.
[03:38.920 --> 03:44.720]  There's no mechanism that's been developed to systematically share these billions and billions of records with the public.
[03:45.540 --> 03:51.060]  Requesting documents under FOIA is a socially useful, necessary, and perfectly legal form of hacking.
[03:51.500 --> 03:55.040]  For example, what happened with the BP blowout?
[03:55.300 --> 03:56.840]  Well, we can find out.
[03:57.060 --> 04:11.040]  We can learn what the email traffic with the minerals management service was the weeks leading up to the blowout, or the days after that, or the phone conversations that may have been recorded when this thing happened, and so on.
[04:17.130 --> 04:18.790]  So here's what we're going to look at today.
[04:19.010 --> 04:21.430]  We're going to look at what is a FOIA request?
[04:21.770 --> 04:22.950]  How you submit one?
[04:23.270 --> 04:25.550]  What are the tools and techniques for FOIA hacking?
[04:25.670 --> 04:33.010]  That is, how do you create a well-crafted and hopefully crafty request that's going to get you the documents and records that you want to find out about?
[04:33.270 --> 04:41.450]  And we're going to do that with a little bit of lecture up front covering some of the background, but then Michael's going to talk about examples from this website we mentioned, governmentaddict.org.
[04:41.870 --> 04:48.770]  And we spent a bunch of time looking at that website and talking to the proprietors of the website to try and figure out what are some tips and tricks.
[04:49.070 --> 04:53.710]  But first we'll go with kind of the basics of what is a FOIA request, how you submit one, that sort of thing.
[04:55.130 --> 04:59.570]  So a FOIA request is as simple as four sentences.
[04:59.830 --> 05:00.670]  This is all you need.
[05:00.750 --> 05:02.970]  It can be a fax, it can be a letter, it can be an email.
[05:02.970 --> 05:07.950]  And people say all the time, Michael constantly gets asked, well, can you give me an example FOIA request?
[05:08.090 --> 05:09.550]  Here's an example FOIA request.
[05:10.090 --> 05:13.730]  Dudes, oh my God, this is totally a request under the Freedom of Information Act.
[05:14.150 --> 05:17.850]  I request that you provide me with a copy of all records regarding whatever.
[05:18.070 --> 05:19.390]  Whatever has to be specific.
[05:19.590 --> 05:21.690]  It has to enable the agency to figure out what it is.
[05:21.790 --> 05:31.450]  So for example, I want a copy of all radio traffic that was from the deep water horizon between this time and this time that was intercepted by the federal government, not that we'd ever intercept our own radio traffic.
[05:32.810 --> 05:36.090]  I'm an individual requesting this information for non-commercial purposes.
[05:36.430 --> 05:39.910]  I'm willing to pay up to $25 if necessary.
[05:40.210 --> 05:40.670]  Thank you.
[05:41.050 --> 05:41.830]  That's all it is.
[05:41.990 --> 05:42.530]  Four sentences.
[05:42.730 --> 05:43.690]  That's a FOIA request.
[05:43.930 --> 05:44.290]  Okay?
[05:44.630 --> 05:46.690]  But you have to have those four sentences in there.
[05:46.870 --> 05:48.270]  It has to say it's a FOIA request.
[05:48.490 --> 05:50.050]  It has to describe the records you want.
[05:50.270 --> 05:53.610]  It has to give information for the fee category, about which more in a second.
[05:53.830 --> 05:56.190]  And it has to state your willingness to pay reasonable fees.
[05:58.310 --> 06:00.590]  Now, here's what the FOIA process looks like.
[06:01.570 --> 06:05.550]  You start off by mailing or faxing or emailing in a request.
[06:05.750 --> 06:07.250]  And the government gets it.
[06:07.470 --> 06:08.410]  They log it.
[06:09.210 --> 06:11.250]  They send you an acknowledgement letter, probably.
[06:11.410 --> 06:12.950]  You probably get that in a few weeks.
[06:14.050 --> 06:15.350]  Then it goes into a queue.
[06:15.750 --> 06:19.190]  The government's gotten better about this, but it takes a while for them to process it.
[06:19.530 --> 06:21.190]  And then they're going to do a search for records.
[06:21.190 --> 06:24.390]  Now, if they can't find any records, they're going to send you a no records response.
[06:24.530 --> 06:26.830]  So you get a little letter saying, we searched, we didn't find anything.
[06:27.210 --> 06:30.990]  Now, at that point, you should be scratching your head if you get a no records response and saying, really?
[06:31.450 --> 06:32.830]  Did you really look for me?
[06:32.970 --> 06:37.950]  Did I maybe inadvertently word my letter in such a way that, you know, maybe I made it too narrow.
[06:38.090 --> 06:41.130]  Maybe I made it, you know, wrong in some way.
[06:41.370 --> 06:43.770]  And that's why you'll see there, there's a feedback loop.
[06:43.990 --> 06:47.330]  Because whenever you get a response from the government, usually it means, oh, okay.
[06:47.330 --> 06:51.070]  Hmm, what can I do differently either to get more documents or maybe that one didn't work.
[06:52.430 --> 06:54.730]  But that's, you know, it starts a feedback loop there.
[06:55.890 --> 06:59.550]  Assuming they did find some records, they're going to then sit down, look at the records.
[06:59.710 --> 07:00.850]  They're going to figure out if they're classified.
[07:00.990 --> 07:02.270]  They have to declassify them first.
[07:02.990 --> 07:05.110]  Then they're going to go through and redact out a bunch of stuff.
[07:05.290 --> 07:06.410]  And then you're going to get your documents.
[07:06.530 --> 07:15.290]  And when you get your documents, after you, you know, get done doing your happy dance of having, actually having documents in hand, you're going to look through and say, wow, this mentions this thing.
[07:15.290 --> 07:16.390]  I never knew about this thing.
[07:16.570 --> 07:18.190]  Let's file another FOIA request.
[07:18.910 --> 07:28.550]  And I honestly think, I think every time the FBI has given me documents for my phone phreak book, I think every time they're like, oh, God, you know, we're going to send him this document.
[07:28.690 --> 07:30.530]  Lapsley is going to send us 20 more FOIA requests.
[07:30.610 --> 07:31.910]  We know exactly how this is going to work.
[07:32.010 --> 07:33.350]  This process doesn't ever converge.
[07:33.610 --> 07:34.310]  It doesn't ever end.
[07:35.670 --> 07:37.370]  Now, how long does this take?
[07:37.550 --> 07:41.070]  Well, you know, it'll take you a few weeks maybe to get an acknowledgement letter.
[07:41.190 --> 07:48.850]  If there are no records, assuming that it's not too burdensome of a search, it's going to be a few weeks or maybe a month, maybe several months to find that out.
[07:49.390 --> 07:55.510]  If it actually, if they find documents, that can take a long time, especially if they're classified, especially if they're voluminous.
[07:55.990 --> 08:00.710]  I think the longest FOIA request I've ever had took about three and a half years.
[08:00.870 --> 08:02.330]  That was from the National Security Agency.
[08:02.550 --> 08:03.010]  But Michael?
[08:03.430 --> 08:09.050]  I still have a couple that are hanging around that are 10.
[08:09.290 --> 08:10.470]  One is 12 years old.
[08:10.750 --> 08:12.470]  And they tell me they're working on them.
[08:12.810 --> 08:18.010]  They're making good progress, but they have a number of them that are older that are in front of me in line.
[08:20.710 --> 08:25.390]  The good news is that's unusual, right?
[08:25.610 --> 08:27.670]  It does happen just to set expectations.
[08:27.850 --> 08:33.990]  So for example, if you want to file FOIA requests for a project that's due in school a month from now, probably not the right thing.
[08:35.270 --> 08:39.550]  Okay, let's talk a little bit about money, about fees, and just the very nuts and bolts here.
[08:40.090 --> 08:44.030]  Agencies are allowed by law to charge reasonable search and duplication fees.
[08:44.030 --> 08:50.030]  So they can charge you for the time that it takes for them to search in some cases, and also for duplication in some cases.
[08:50.510 --> 08:52.690]  The fees are based on what are called fee categories.
[08:52.850 --> 08:53.530]  There are four of them.
[08:53.910 --> 08:56.510]  There's non-commercial requester, which is most folks.
[08:56.770 --> 08:58.710]  There's representative of the news media.
[08:59.090 --> 09:02.310]  There's commercial, and there's educational or scientific organizations.
[09:04.190 --> 09:17.010]  Most requests end up being either free or a few tens of dollars, but if you have a big voluminous request or, you know, it's a really complicated search, it can actually be several hundred, thousands or even more dollars.
[09:17.670 --> 09:18.450]  Two things here.
[09:18.550 --> 09:19.890]  One is you want to limit your exposure.
[09:20.050 --> 09:26.070]  So you want to state up front how much it is you're willing to pay in your letter and tell them, call me if it's going to cost more than $25, whatever it is.
[09:26.290 --> 09:32.150]  And then if the fees seem unreasonably high, call up the FOIA officer at the agency, get them on the phone and say, hey, what's up with this?
[09:33.290 --> 09:36.790]  Which piece of this is the part that's causing the fees?
[09:36.790 --> 09:40.550]  So you can modulate the request appropriately and make changes.
[09:40.550 --> 09:40.870]  Right.
[09:41.070 --> 09:45.890]  And the art of this is being able to thread the needle so you basically you're not charged fees for anything you ask for.
[09:46.130 --> 09:51.610]  If you're a reporter, they don't charge for search fees, so it's very limited and they give out waivers of fees.
[09:51.750 --> 09:57.310]  But if you're an individual looking for stuff, the art is framing the request so you get what you want, but you don't pay anything.
[10:00.530 --> 10:02.110]  Now, Michael and I have this theory.
[10:02.430 --> 10:03.750]  We call it the Tollbooth Theory.
[10:04.530 --> 10:10.510]  And it is that many agencies, not all, but many, use fees as a way to dissuade requesters.
[10:11.510 --> 10:13.950]  Now, this is even just talking about legitimate fees, right?
[10:14.010 --> 10:18.010]  So you file a request with, say, the FBI and you want to know about, oh, I don't know, UFOs.
[10:18.330 --> 10:23.330]  And it turns out that's going to be, let's just say, hypothetically, 25,000 pages because the FBI...
[10:23.330 --> 10:27.730]  I don't know if this is true or not, but let's just say, hypothetically, they have a lot of pages on UFOs or the CIA or whoever.
[10:27.870 --> 10:28.670]  Pick your favorite agency.
[10:29.030 --> 10:33.690]  Well, if they're charging you 10 cents a page, you're now looking at $2,500 for 25,000 pages.
[10:34.350 --> 10:36.830]  So that's going to dissuade you unless you're made of money.
[10:38.110 --> 10:44.710]  So in addition to that, some agencies charge unreasonable fees or they will make mistakes that make things all the more expensive.
[10:44.990 --> 10:47.650]  And so we jokingly refer to that as the Tollbooth.
[10:47.770 --> 10:49.490]  You know, the Tollbooth keeps people off the highway.
[10:50.170 --> 11:03.750]  Knowing the fee categories, being willing to reframe your request like Michael was saying to thread the needle, and discussing your request with FOIA staff and especially their IT people if you're requesting a database, that can go a long way towards making sure that you don't end up paying extra fees.
[11:03.970 --> 11:11.990]  One of the things that's happened is a lot of the agencies have to improve their processing and save, become more efficient, have actually gone to electronic redaction and processing.
[11:12.230 --> 11:16.390]  So they scan everything and they manipulate electronically and they can output it as a PDF.
[11:16.390 --> 11:19.010]  Well, at that point, the duplication fees are essentially zero.
[11:19.750 --> 11:33.270]  So the ability to dump stuff onto a CD and mail it to you or even better yet, email it to you, which is happening more and more frequently, is actually getting rid of that Tollbooth, which may seem like a good thing because they don't have to photocopy hundreds and thousands of pages if someone asks for something.
[11:33.450 --> 11:38.390]  But the agencies get nervous about that because they say, we're giving out thousands of pages, but we don't have a Tollbooth anymore.
[11:38.830 --> 11:41.410]  This is an easy pass system and someone's getting a free ride.
[11:41.410 --> 11:50.710]  So sometimes there's a little discomfort at the agency level with how do they control people asking for things when there's no way to charge fees for something they think they should use to control it.
[11:50.890 --> 11:51.090]  Right.
[11:51.090 --> 11:51.670]  I hope that made sense.
[11:53.190 --> 11:53.590]  Okay.
[11:53.690 --> 11:55.310]  So let's talk a little bit about exemptions.
[11:56.390 --> 12:03.950]  Unfortunately for us, you can request any document you want, but the agencies don't have to necessarily give it to you because of these things called exemptions.
[12:04.090 --> 12:06.790]  Certain things are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.
[12:06.790 --> 12:09.690]  So they're allowed to black out or redact some sections.
[12:09.930 --> 12:12.850]  They don't even have to give you anything if the entire document is exempt.
[12:13.110 --> 12:22.870]  And exemptions range from national security to privacy concerns to go away that's internal stuff that really doesn't, you know, concerns the internal operation of our agency that doesn't concern you.
[12:23.030 --> 12:23.910]  There's nothing to see here.
[12:23.970 --> 12:24.310]  Move along.
[12:24.550 --> 12:24.950]  Exactly.
[12:25.090 --> 12:25.170]  Right.
[12:25.290 --> 12:26.810]  These aren't the documents you're looking for.
[12:29.690 --> 12:31.230]  Now, I'm not going to go through...
[12:31.230 --> 12:32.610]  There are ten exemptions.
[12:32.870 --> 12:34.070]  I'm not going to go through them in detail.
[12:34.070 --> 12:37.170]  You can Google them, whatever you want, to find out more about it.
[12:37.230 --> 12:39.290]  I'm going to point out, though, what they look like.
[12:40.350 --> 12:40.930]  This is...
[12:40.930 --> 12:41.550]  Here's a document.
[12:41.650 --> 12:46.690]  This is on TAP, which was the predecessor to YIPL, and both of which were the predecessor to 2600 Magazine.
[12:46.950 --> 12:48.330]  This was an FBI file on it.
[12:50.530 --> 12:53.770]  And, you know, redactions look like Swiss cheese sprinkled with gibberish.
[12:54.090 --> 12:57.790]  And the Swiss cheese is where they blacked out sections of the document, or in this case whited out.
[12:58.050 --> 13:03.210]  The gibberish, you see down on the margin on the right-hand side, there are these little letters that say things like B2, B6, B7C.
[13:03.210 --> 13:08.850]  Those are actually telling you which part of the Freedom of Information Act, the specific statutes are these exemptions.
[13:08.990 --> 13:11.210]  So B2 is internal, B6 is...
[13:12.110 --> 13:12.910]  What is B6?
[13:12.930 --> 13:13.570]  Personal privacy.
[13:13.670 --> 13:14.310]  Personal privacy.
[13:15.290 --> 13:18.830]  B7D is criminal stuff perhaps having to do with an informant, et cetera.
[13:19.250 --> 13:24.410]  One of the other reasons that they withhold things sometimes is they write in big letters NR, which means non-responsive.
[13:24.410 --> 13:29.470]  So in other words, they have these documents and they've whited out or blacked out big areas and called them non-responsive.
[13:29.590 --> 13:36.630]  So some requesters have gone back and said, give me all the stuff that you felt was not responsive to my original request, but you blacked out on the stuff you sent me.
[13:37.590 --> 13:38.530]  Because it looks interesting.
[13:40.110 --> 13:42.470]  So some exemptions are questionable.
[13:43.130 --> 13:47.330]  The fact that an agency has exempted something doesn't actually mean they were right about doing it.
[13:47.530 --> 13:51.210]  And there are some exemptions in particular that are problem areas, and we're going to highlight them.
[13:51.510 --> 13:57.710]  When it comes to the Freedom of Information Act, for whatever reason, bless their hearts, agencies inadvertently make a lot of errors.
[13:58.030 --> 13:58.750]  A lot.
[13:58.750 --> 14:03.270]  Now, it's not to say every time you get an exemption, because you're going to get a lot of exemptions if you file FOIA requests.
[14:03.370 --> 14:04.790]  You're going to see lots of stuff redacted out.
[14:05.250 --> 14:08.390]  Many, many, many, probably most of those are correct, but you have to be skeptical.
[14:08.790 --> 14:13.230]  And in particular, when you see these three exemptions, these are places where you should be particularly skeptical.
[14:14.010 --> 14:16.070]  B1 is national security information.
[14:16.430 --> 14:18.070]  B2 is internal materials.
[14:18.590 --> 14:20.830]  And B5 is legally privileged material.
[14:21.690 --> 14:24.250]  Michael, you want to talk about privilege since you're the resident lawyer?
[14:24.750 --> 14:24.950]  Sure.
[14:28.330 --> 14:31.630]  The B5 is probably the most commonly misused exemption.
[14:32.210 --> 14:37.950]  It sometimes serves as a catch-all for all the stuff that they don't want to give out, but probably should under the law.
[14:38.090 --> 14:46.130]  The law says under the case law that material to be withheld under this has to be produced as pre-decisional.
[14:46.230 --> 14:47.590]  It has to be before a decision is made.
[14:47.670 --> 14:49.030]  It has to lead up to some decision.
[14:49.190 --> 14:50.110]  It has to be a real decision.
[14:50.270 --> 14:51.050]  And it has to be deliberative.
[14:51.690 --> 14:54.190]  It has to actually weigh the benefits of what's going on.
[14:54.190 --> 14:55.250]  It has to be opinionated.
[14:55.450 --> 14:57.170]  It has to be an opinion, not fact.
[14:57.310 --> 14:58.590]  If it's factual, it has to be released.
[14:58.770 --> 15:01.630]  If it's deliberative, but if it's any one of those...
[15:01.630 --> 15:05.150]  If it's not any one of those things put together, if there's and commands between them.
[15:05.290 --> 15:07.210]  If there's anything missing, you have to give it out.
[15:07.330 --> 15:09.610]  But they often say, well, the whole thing's just withheld.
[15:09.790 --> 15:13.190]  So there's a lot of mistakes there, and they don't train very well in that area.
[15:14.450 --> 15:17.670]  Oh, one other thing that happens is they might withhold something in full.
[15:17.670 --> 15:19.230]  Basically says, we found stuff.
[15:19.670 --> 15:21.910]  It's all withheld in full.
[15:22.090 --> 15:23.370]  There's nothing we can give out.
[15:23.470 --> 15:24.730]  And that's usually blatantly wrong.
[15:24.730 --> 15:29.750]  Because there's a requirement that they give out what they call all segregable, releasable portions.
[15:29.930 --> 15:31.110]  It sounds like a terrible thing.
[15:32.230 --> 15:36.370]  But it basically says, you have to look at it word by word, sentence by sentence.
[15:36.490 --> 15:39.730]  Figure out what you can give out and just hold on to the stuff that you really can't give out.
[15:39.850 --> 15:40.750]  But give out everything else.
[15:42.570 --> 15:46.210]  One of the ones that I liked recently was a request that I had filed and I got back.
[15:46.550 --> 15:48.750]  All I was asking for was a list of documents.
[15:49.030 --> 15:52.930]  And they said, oh, no, the titles of the documents themselves are classified.
[15:53.910 --> 15:54.590]  Okay, great.
[15:56.030 --> 15:58.450]  Okay, so what can you do when you get these exemptions?
[15:58.570 --> 16:00.070]  Well, you send an appeal letter.
[16:00.150 --> 16:03.070]  You appeal to whatever the appeals authority is for that agency.
[16:03.190 --> 16:05.050]  And we're not going to teach you how to write an appeal letter here.
[16:05.270 --> 16:07.310]  You can Google FOIA appeal for more info.
[16:07.310 --> 16:09.770]  But the denial letter will tell you...
[16:09.770 --> 16:12.290]  The letter you get back from the agency denying you access to the documents.
[16:12.330 --> 16:14.870]  That'll tell you where you should send your appeal.
[16:15.350 --> 16:17.850]  And, you know, you have actually a pretty good chance with an appeal.
[16:17.990 --> 16:21.170]  You're not necessarily going to get everything you ask for, but you're going to get more frequently.
[16:21.570 --> 16:23.610]  So, and if you can just kind of explain like this...
[16:23.610 --> 16:25.450]  Look, this is where the confusion seems to be.
[16:25.530 --> 16:27.010]  You don't need to be an attorney to write this.
[16:27.130 --> 16:28.090]  It's not a scary thing.
[16:28.230 --> 16:29.090]  You just write a letter.
[16:30.910 --> 16:32.170]  Okay, now, some good news.
[16:32.650 --> 16:35.990]  I started doing this in 2005 under the Bush administration.
[16:35.990 --> 16:38.550]  I've seen a lot of changes now under Obama.
[16:38.970 --> 16:46.850]  Under the Bush administration with Attorney General Ashcroft, essentially the order to agencies was use FOIA exemptions aggressively to withhold material.
[16:47.070 --> 17:01.350]  Under Obama and Attorney General Holder, the new world order is release as much as possible, presume release when in doubt, and release even material which technically may be exempt, that is may fall under a FOIA exemption if there is no foreseeable harm.
[17:01.350 --> 17:03.150]  So that's great news, and it's made a big difference.
[17:03.390 --> 17:03.610]  Phil,
[17:08.980 --> 17:20.040]  literally under the previous administration, the rule was if the Justice Department said, we will defend in court any agency who legitimately can use an exemption.
[17:20.120 --> 17:21.240]  It was a very powerful statement.
[17:21.440 --> 17:29.560]  And one of... they think it's Obama's first official act in office was to issue a memorandum saying, that's nonsense, and we will... we want you to presume release.
[17:29.680 --> 17:33.260]  And actually, it took about a year for it to kick in at the agency level.
[17:33.380 --> 17:35.700]  It was about... there's a lot of inertia at the agency level.
[17:35.800 --> 17:38.200]  They're not connected with a very close court.
[17:38.680 --> 17:46.100]  About a year later, they started actually... I've heard from people who make a lot of requests that they've started actually releasing information much more actively.
[17:46.200 --> 17:47.740]  And now, of course, it's a huge change.
[17:48.360 --> 17:51.240]  They release things that ordinarily they put up a fight on, apparently.
[17:53.300 --> 17:53.660]  Okay.
[17:55.340 --> 17:58.900]  So, we have some examples we've drawn from the people at Government Attic.
[17:58.980 --> 17:59.940]  And this stuff is all online.
[17:59.940 --> 18:00.640]  You can look at it.
[18:00.700 --> 18:02.620]  And there's a lot of things there that are quite interesting.
[18:03.340 --> 18:06.540]  This is a non-commercial website that was founded in 2007.
[18:06.760 --> 18:10.640]  They've filed numerous FOIA requests, and the fruits of those requests are posted.
[18:11.540 --> 18:14.940]  As a public service, they post documents that aren't available anywhere else.
[18:15.320 --> 18:17.360]  And they're shy people, but they agreed to be interviewed.
[18:18.440 --> 18:22.220]  The first item is an FBI confidential room dossier.
[18:22.360 --> 18:28.960]  Between 1950 and 1972, they had this room where they put sensitive documents that were so sensitive, they couldn't include them in the normal file scheme.
[18:29.540 --> 18:35.760]  And the room, according to the memos, the room got so heavy because they had so many file cabinets that it was threatening...
[18:35.760 --> 18:37.340]  the building was threatening to collapse.
[18:39.160 --> 18:40.100]  He's not joking.
[18:40.300 --> 18:41.060]  That's in the memo.
[18:41.140 --> 18:41.360]  It's in the memo.
[18:41.460 --> 18:42.280]  You can read it online.
[18:42.500 --> 18:48.980]  And so, they started to weed it out because every once in a while, they had to go through it and pull out things that were no longer as sensitive as they were.
[18:49.080 --> 18:52.580]  And there was a real variety of stuff that's described in this series of memos.
[18:52.800 --> 18:54.260]  And they really serve as a roadmap.
[18:54.480 --> 18:56.960]  They mapped historically significant FBI files.
[18:57.080 --> 18:58.960]  They're documents that point to other documents.
[18:59.220 --> 19:09.020]  And it shows the tension within the FBI, which is probably true in other agencies, where they wanted to be able to use the files to do investigations, and they had to be connected with everything else.
[19:09.200 --> 19:11.540]  But at the same time, they wanted to limit access to them.
[19:11.640 --> 19:13.620]  So, they're pulling in different directions.
[19:13.880 --> 19:20.800]  And that same thing happened a few years ago, over the last few years, when they were trying to do an electronic filing system, electronic document system.
[19:21.100 --> 19:24.620]  And that's one of the problems in why it ultimately failed.
[19:24.800 --> 19:26.900]  They gave up and they had to start over again.
[19:27.440 --> 19:29.280]  Because you can't sequester things...
[19:29.280 --> 19:30.580]  You have to sequester certain things.
[19:30.700 --> 19:32.420]  Let's say, witness protection program materials.
[19:32.420 --> 19:35.800]  But you can't sequester them too much because then you can't make any use of them.
[19:36.780 --> 19:44.320]  So, the interesting thing about this dossier is they released enough material that it permits requests for particular interesting files that they identify by file number.
[19:44.440 --> 19:45.580]  You don't have to ask for the name.
[19:45.700 --> 19:46.740]  You don't have to ask them to do a search.
[19:46.820 --> 19:48.220]  You say, I want this file number.
[19:49.100 --> 19:55.340]  And even if they took out the name, these people have asked for some of the files by file number alone.
[19:55.520 --> 19:57.900]  And the prefix tells you what sort of file it is, actually.
[19:58.200 --> 20:04.980]  So, one of the items in here was a file on the smuggling of atomic bombs or parts thereof and other weapons of mass destruction into the United States.
[20:05.300 --> 20:12.320]  It contains highly classified information and estimates of Soviet developments in the field, together with suggested countermeasures.
[20:12.440 --> 20:24.420]  Basically, what this file talks about is guys taking suitcases into the United States or small boats, but mostly diplomatic personnel carrying in big suitcases with atomic bombs in them, bringing them into the country.
[20:24.820 --> 20:27.700]  And the weapons of mass destruction is not a new term.
[20:27.700 --> 20:30.220]  It shows up in these old FBI files 60 years ago.
[20:32.260 --> 20:37.700]  The FBI also... another item posted on Government Attic is the FBI's high visibility memos.
[20:37.820 --> 20:45.400]  These were produced every time a famous person's FBI file was released or something... a high profile FBI file was released.
[20:45.580 --> 20:56.740]  They produced internally what's called the high visibility memo and they circulate it within the FBI and notified the families of anyone that was affected because they got some complaints after some files were released of someone famous.
[20:56.740 --> 20:59.960]  And these memos point to a whole bunch of notable files.
[21:00.140 --> 21:03.360]  They go on for decades and there's hundreds of items mentioned.
[21:03.520 --> 21:04.880]  And of course, they're interesting files.
[21:05.000 --> 21:07.220]  So they're another roadmap to more interesting stuff.
[21:07.480 --> 21:12.360]  The webmeisters asked for them after they saw a mention of high-vis files in some other...
[21:12.360 --> 21:13.400]  in another document.
[21:15.160 --> 21:16.680]  Here's one on John Lennon.
[21:16.980 --> 21:21.160]  The bulk of the documents to be released are from a security matter new left investigatory file.
[21:21.280 --> 21:28.400]  The investigation was initiated upon receipt of information that Lennon might engage in activities to disrupt the 1972 Republican National Convention.
[21:30.880 --> 21:34.040]  The third item is the DOD resale activities border review.
[21:34.180 --> 21:35.780]  It sounds like the most boring thing you can imagine.
[21:35.960 --> 21:40.980]  But it was established by Congress to review which videos and magazines could be sold on military bases.
[21:42.620 --> 21:48.900]  So these guys heard about this and they requested the meeting minutes and the agendas and the decisions they made.
[21:49.540 --> 21:52.360]  And this is an example of where government and free speech collide.
[21:52.360 --> 21:56.500]  And Government Attic has published a number of interesting documents that show that collision.
[21:56.500 --> 22:03.520]  For example, religious activities in prison, where prisoners are asking to belong to the Church of the Ganjo or something.
[22:03.720 --> 22:09.800]  And the intersection between government and free speech and religion and so on, those are always really interesting junctures.
[22:11.360 --> 22:13.040]  So the board met six times.
[22:13.240 --> 22:18.720]  They reviewed, during this period, they reviewed 279 periodicals, 58 films, 5 audio recordings.
[22:19.060 --> 22:21.720]  And it's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it.
[22:21.720 --> 22:23.940]  And they did this year after year for several years.
[22:24.100 --> 22:25.680]  And the results are on the website.
[22:27.220 --> 22:27.740]  Oops.
[22:28.920 --> 22:30.080]  So that's the result.
[22:31.260 --> 22:33.260]  160 magazines, no good.
[22:33.880 --> 22:34.800]  10 others were okay.
[22:35.100 --> 22:38.080]  The ratio for videos was probably about the same.
[22:38.300 --> 22:41.580]  Some of the titles were things we probably wouldn't show here.
[22:42.960 --> 22:47.220]  Interestingly enough, the people at Playgirl magazine, the editors, filed an appeal.
[22:47.220 --> 22:49.340]  They were the only people who ever filed an appeal.
[22:49.340 --> 22:53.460]  And they said, Playboy is okay, but why is our magazine banned?
[22:53.680 --> 22:58.220]  And the board... I can't swear to this, because I don't remember exactly.
[22:58.220 --> 23:00.380]  But I believe the board turned them down and said no.
[23:00.580 --> 23:02.260]  But the answer is on governmentaddict.org.
[23:02.260 --> 23:03.760]  The answer is on governmentaddict.org, right.
[23:05.500 --> 23:10.260]  The Air Force and all the military services have Hollywood offices.
[23:10.260 --> 23:10.960]  They still do.
[23:11.100 --> 23:12.980]  The Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard.
[23:13.060 --> 23:13.840]  They all have these ELOs.
[23:14.420 --> 23:28.860]  And they have this office in Hollywood, and their job is to talk to all the movie producers, all the TV producers, anybody who wants to do anything that involves any military assets, or wants to get a script reviewed, or wants uniform or costume information,
[23:29.120 --> 23:30.080]  wants any kind of input.
[23:30.200 --> 23:37.900]  Basically, if you want to use an aircraft carrier for your movie, if you want jets flying over, if you want to show anything, you really got to talk to them to get the help.
[23:38.120 --> 23:40.800]  And they decide whether they want to help you, and if you don't...
[23:40.800 --> 23:46.920]  And they also, by the way, want to see the script ahead of time, and they want to make sure anything that doesn't portray the military in the proper light is corrected.
[23:47.360 --> 23:48.760]  It's, you know, it's their prerogative.
[23:48.880 --> 23:49.880]  They're supplying all the toys.
[23:50.740 --> 23:53.160]  So the government addict folks said that they must...
[23:53.160 --> 23:56.900]  If they're doing this, there must be something that says, what are these guys out in Hollywood actually doing?
[23:57.020 --> 23:58.700]  How are they justifying their existence out there?
[23:58.800 --> 24:00.160]  So there must be periodic reporting.
[24:00.580 --> 24:02.080]  There must be this and that.
[24:02.200 --> 24:06.280]  So they asked for the periodic reporting, and they got all these weekly reports from the Army and the Air Force.
[24:06.360 --> 24:08.760]  I think the other services were a little more reticent.
[24:09.440 --> 24:14.220]  And it really shows a window into how DOD has influence in Hollywood, for better or worse.
[24:14.300 --> 24:16.900]  And it shows how the military builds its brand through the use of movies and television.
[24:16.920 --> 24:19.420]  And how much activity they do.
[24:19.560 --> 24:23.100]  They are involved in hundreds and hundreds of projects each year.
[24:24.100 --> 24:24.580]  Oops.
[24:25.700 --> 24:26.800]  So here's an example.
[24:26.920 --> 24:38.160]  Gumball 3000, the public affairs office at Edwards Air Force Base, referred to the Pentagon, a producer whose project involved music and entertainment stars going on a cannonball-like race from Las Vegas to Los Angeles.
[24:38.380 --> 24:43.760]  They asked if they could race on the Edwards Air Force Base runways, which are the longest in the world, I believe.
[24:44.000 --> 24:47.220]  And according to the producer, the event would be on MTV and made into a feature.
[24:48.000 --> 24:56.080]  The Air Force at the Pentagon said, nope, there's not enough Air Force involvement to warrant the help at this time, plus the race plans to end at a Playboy Mansion.
[24:59.090 --> 25:02.750]  And there are literally hundreds of pages on the Entertainment Liaison Office.
[25:02.910 --> 25:04.530]  Quite interesting stuff if you poke through it.
[25:06.510 --> 25:15.710]  The Federal Emergency Management Agency keeps a set of lessons learned from disasters and hurricanes, tornadoes, space shuttle crashes, everything you can imagine.
[25:15.970 --> 25:19.810]  These are things where something went wrong and people are trying to figure out what the lessons learned.
[25:20.030 --> 25:24.450]  And the people at Government Attic asked for the copy of the database and they got a printout of the lessons learned.
[25:26.790 --> 25:33.310]  So one suggestion was in there, said that in support of recent hurricanes, CR's primary function is to hand out flyers to victims.
[25:33.410 --> 25:42.830]  If I were a disaster victim without access to phone or electricity or any means to get to a disaster center and I received a flyer informing me of this information, I would be infuriated.
[25:45.030 --> 25:49.670]  So we looked at all the stuff on Government Attic and we put it in four buckets.
[25:50.550 --> 25:53.870]  The first bucket was documents pointing to other documents.
[25:54.170 --> 25:58.150]  These guys seem to have gotten meta records access into an art here.
[25:59.330 --> 26:02.470]  One of the big things they have is a section on FOIA case logs.
[26:02.590 --> 26:11.610]  Freedom of information case logs are basically a system activity log for each agency that says who asked for what, what they asked for, in some cases how successful they were.
[26:11.610 --> 26:16.690]  It's a list of all attempts people have made to get different things and how people have asked for things.
[26:17.010 --> 26:18.550]  What were the magic words they used?
[26:18.910 --> 26:20.950]  And it's really remarkable stuff.
[26:22.190 --> 26:27.270]  Up until a few years ago, no one used this, but they seem to have made a habit of asking for this.
[26:27.350 --> 26:29.590]  It's become more popular in the FOIA community, I understand.
[26:30.550 --> 26:34.850]  They've asked for the contents of agency intranet sites, the internal intranet sites.
[26:34.930 --> 26:39.890]  And some agencies have so many internal net sites that they don't know how many they have.
[26:39.890 --> 26:42.070]  They literally do not have a count of how many they have.
[26:43.130 --> 26:48.730]  And they, what they do is they asked for, these guys asked for the homepage and then all the pages connected to it by one click.
[26:48.930 --> 26:51.770]  And then sometimes all the pages connected to it by two clicks.
[26:51.970 --> 26:55.450]  So they worked their way down the hierarchy and along the way, they found a lot of neat stuff.
[26:55.710 --> 26:57.410]  And they asked for those things too, in some cases.
[26:57.550 --> 27:02.430]  So it's a very productive, it turns out that agencies post a lot of really interesting information on their internal sites.
[27:02.430 --> 27:06.190]  And so because it's posted, it's very easy for them to find and get to.
[27:06.310 --> 27:08.990]  And so these guys seem to mine that pretty well.
[27:09.970 --> 27:13.090]  Inspector generals in different agencies do lots and lots of investigations.
[27:13.090 --> 27:16.110]  And when they close them, the titles are available and the reports are available.
[27:16.190 --> 27:20.230]  And these guys just ask for a list of all the closed investigations at each agency.
[27:20.510 --> 27:24.270]  Something the IGs never provided before.
[27:25.190 --> 27:26.390]  The IGs have a dual role.
[27:26.610 --> 27:31.670]  They're supposed to watch out for bad stuff going on within an agency, but they're also supposed to sort of watch out for the agency itself.
[27:31.670 --> 27:36.330]  So it's a little tough for them to promote all the bad stuff they find about the agency they work for.
[27:37.170 --> 27:39.070]  If I can jump in here for a second, Michael.
[27:39.350 --> 27:42.070]  This goes to the point you made earlier about in the introduction.
[27:43.230 --> 27:49.410]  That one of the huge socially valuable roles of FOIA is to pry information out of the government that we should have anyway.
[27:50.070 --> 27:53.530]  But that there's no mechanism right now for distributing, right?
[27:53.610 --> 27:58.030]  So there's just no mechanism currently for a lot of the stuff to get out to the citizenry.
[27:58.110 --> 27:59.330]  And so you have to ask for it.
[27:59.350 --> 28:00.150]  And that's a great example.
[28:00.150 --> 28:03.090]  So the inspector generals, they would love to have this information out there.
[28:03.190 --> 28:12.130]  But protocol dictates they really can't make a point of telling people, you know, how many people were looking at bad stuff on their internal computers during working hours or something.
[28:12.270 --> 28:14.470]  But there's a lot of interesting information.
[28:14.790 --> 28:21.870]  So TSA had emergency amendments, all kinds of things about restrictions on traveling, getting on airplanes, and they've got lists of that.
[28:21.870 --> 28:25.330]  The next category is agency, self-identified interesting documents.
[28:25.610 --> 28:27.910]  How do you find out what the interesting stuff is at agencies?
[28:28.150 --> 28:30.330]  You tell the... you get the agency to tell you what's there.
[28:30.590 --> 28:35.990]  So, for example, people have asked... these guys have asked for the list of the oldest still classified documents at an agency.
[28:36.130 --> 28:38.270]  They go back 60 or 70 or 80 years, by the way.
[28:38.430 --> 28:44.530]  The oldest classified documents, by the way, that I've been able to ascertain are about 110 years old.
[28:46.490 --> 28:47.430]  That's a long story.
[28:47.610 --> 28:49.810]  But they're still... they're still... they're still classified.
[28:49.970 --> 28:53.710]  The oldest documents at the National Archives are about 94 years old, and they have to do with invisible links.
[28:53.850 --> 28:56.190]  But some of these things just never get declassified.
[28:57.430 --> 28:58.730]  Lists of restricted opinions.
[28:58.870 --> 29:01.890]  Different agencies produce all these reports and opinions, and they're restricted.
[29:02.070 --> 29:04.290]  So these guys asked for a list of all the restricted stuff.
[29:05.030 --> 29:07.430]  Reports of an agency to Congress that were not posted online.
[29:07.490 --> 29:10.610]  You can see an example of a complex query here, which they can do.
[29:10.610 --> 29:15.850]  And that provides access to all the stuff they gave to Congress, but didn't bother to tell anybody else they were doing.
[29:16.290 --> 29:17.470]  And let me just jump in there.
[29:17.670 --> 29:19.130]  Think about the request letter, right?
[29:19.590 --> 29:28.010]  You know, dear agency, please send me copies of everything that you... everything... all your reports to Congress that you didn't bother to post online, right?
[29:28.550 --> 29:30.570]  You would think that the answer would be none.
[29:30.810 --> 29:31.650]  We posted everything.
[29:31.850 --> 29:33.410]  But of course, that's not the case, right?
[29:33.790 --> 29:34.170]  I mean...
[29:34.170 --> 29:41.190]  It appears that for an agency to post things online, they really... the information or documents have to have an internal champion, and they have to overcome some bureaucratic inertia.
[29:41.370 --> 29:42.810]  I don't think there's anything evil going on here.
[29:42.870 --> 29:45.450]  It's just that it takes some effort to get these things going.
[29:45.590 --> 29:49.530]  And because they produce so much material, there's a little bit of a barrier overcome.
[29:50.230 --> 29:53.950]  So the two other categories were peek behind the scenes.
[29:54.150 --> 29:59.810]  For example, asking for the contents of the tracking or processing files for other FOIA requests.
[30:00.350 --> 30:03.910]  Let's look behind the scenes at the activity log and see what they actually did.
[30:03.910 --> 30:04.950]  And you can tell...
[30:04.950 --> 30:11.950]  Well, you see a request, and it shows where an agency found stuff, but it technically wasn't...
[30:11.950 --> 30:16.130]  They interpreted it to say that it wasn't relevant, so they didn't give it to the person.
[30:16.250 --> 30:19.010]  But all that back-and-forth chatter and traffic is in those files.
[30:19.130 --> 30:21.070]  And that's sort of an interesting diagnostic tool.
[30:21.670 --> 30:29.830]  And internal agency newsletters, correspondence with members of Congress, articles from National Security Agency technical journals going back decades, which are quite interesting.
[30:30.870 --> 30:32.770]  NORAD 9-11 air defense recordings.
[30:33.030 --> 30:37.010]  I think that Vanity Fair actually got those first, but these guys posted all 100 hours online.
[30:37.750 --> 30:39.410]  And agency memorandum of understanding.
[30:39.530 --> 30:44.450]  Those are basically agreements or peace treaties between an agency and everybody else in the world, or other agencies.
[30:44.810 --> 30:45.910]  And then pop culture.
[30:45.930 --> 30:47.070]  Here's just a couple of examples.
[30:47.230 --> 30:50.090]  They asked for a list of movies and books on the space station, and they got it.
[30:50.170 --> 30:51.650]  That got a lot of press, I understand.
[30:51.710 --> 30:53.110]  I saw a lot of articles about that.
[30:53.590 --> 30:58.310]  All these people were upset that their particular favorite movie was not on there, and some people were criticizing the agent.
[30:58.310 --> 31:00.710]  The astronauts for their choice of movie watching up there.
[31:01.870 --> 31:03.790]  Do you know if Firefly was on there?
[31:03.970 --> 31:05.630]  You'd think that would be on the space station, right?
[31:05.850 --> 31:06.150]  Never mind.
[31:07.370 --> 31:11.870]  And complaints to the FCC about particular TV shows, which they have a whole section on.
[31:11.950 --> 31:12.570]  It's quite interesting.
[31:12.730 --> 31:15.230]  And it turns out that there's a lot of people who complain about shows.
[31:15.750 --> 31:19.190]  And how they're watching the shows that they can't stand to watch is another story.
[31:19.350 --> 31:22.830]  But there's people who will find complaints about just about any TV show.
[31:25.050 --> 31:25.450]  Bill?
[31:25.650 --> 31:26.010]  Sure.
[31:28.390 --> 31:31.430]  So we've talked a lot about documents tonight.
[31:32.230 --> 31:34.350]  And generally when you think FOIA, you think paper.
[31:34.590 --> 31:35.130]  But you shouldn't.
[31:35.870 --> 31:39.390]  Databases and electronic records are fair game under the Freedom of Information Act.
[31:40.110 --> 31:43.250]  And there are a bunch of advantages to asking for stuff electronically.
[31:43.570 --> 31:54.270]  One is even if you're just asking for, like Michael was saying earlier, if you're asking for documents, if they've actually processed them into a PDF or something like that, you know, it's the reproduction costs are much lower.
[31:54.430 --> 31:57.550]  And it's then much easier to share with your friends or post online or whatever.
[31:57.830 --> 32:01.290]  But you can also request entire databases, right?
[32:01.430 --> 32:03.450]  Because the database is just really a collection of records.
[32:03.610 --> 32:04.870]  And so it's subject of FOIA.
[32:05.310 --> 32:10.410]  So, and these days, pretty much anything that any agency does, there's a database associated with it.
[32:10.410 --> 32:15.970]  The database may not be anything more sophisticated than an Excel spreadsheet, but it's there and you can request it.
[32:16.190 --> 32:19.650]  And, you know, an example of that is Michael mentioned FOIA activity logs.
[32:19.830 --> 32:21.030]  That's really just a form of database.
[32:21.570 --> 32:22.410]  Phil, excuse me.
[32:22.530 --> 32:32.830]  One of the things that happens sometimes I understand from these guys is that the agency FOIA office says, you can't have that database because it's a proprietary software running it and we can't give it to you.
[32:33.050 --> 32:41.090]  And often they say a talk with the agency IT person helps resolve that into a downloadable format that they can look at.
[32:41.610 --> 32:41.890]  Right.
[32:42.110 --> 32:47.190]  And similarly, if you, sometimes there may just be some fields in the database that they're freaked out about.
[32:47.350 --> 32:50.290]  And so if you talk to them about why, why can't you process my request?
[32:50.390 --> 32:51.390]  Oh, we can't give you these fields.
[32:51.850 --> 32:52.370]  That's great.
[32:52.430 --> 32:53.570]  I don't actually want those fields.
[32:53.770 --> 32:54.270]  How about now?
[32:54.690 --> 32:55.930]  Oh, well, yeah, I guess so.
[32:56.350 --> 33:01.070]  There's a, there's a famous story about a state department database that, that either these guys or someone else asked for.
[33:01.210 --> 33:07.630]  And they said, we can't, it's in, in such an antiquated database system that we can't download it because it would break the database.
[33:09.170 --> 33:09.890]  True story.
[33:10.010 --> 33:10.350]  True story.
[33:10.430 --> 33:11.190]  Look it up on Google.
[33:11.390 --> 33:12.830]  It is, it is a read never database.
[33:15.750 --> 33:20.010]  So here's an example, and this is not government addict, but this is a FOIA web mashup.
[33:20.130 --> 33:20.930]  That's really kind of cool.
[33:20.930 --> 33:33.930]  Um, the, uh, Air Force Historical Research Agency, AFRA, which is basically the Air Force, uh, history branch, um, maintains, uh, it's an internal database of 550,000, uh, historical Air Force documents.
[33:34.070 --> 33:38.170]  These are sort of like, you can think of it as like a card catalog of, of, uh, Air Force documents.
[33:38.630 --> 33:44.230]  And so, uh, some enterprising folks filed a FOIA request, got the entire database and put them on the web.
[33:44.410 --> 33:51.530]  And so you can now go to www.airforcehistoryindex.org and, uh, you can see this entire database.
[33:51.810 --> 33:53.690]  Uh, and it's really, it's really quite amazing.
[33:53.850 --> 33:59.750]  And we've heard the Air Force itself uses this database rather than their own internal version because they can't remember the past.
[33:59.870 --> 34:03.290]  They don't want to remember the passwords to get into their own system and they require some logins.
[34:03.290 --> 34:07.110]  So they use this one instead and the interface is probably better.
[34:14.390 --> 34:14.750]  Okay.
[34:15.370 --> 34:20.470]  So one of the problems that faces all of us as FOIA requesters is where's the interesting stuff?
[34:20.590 --> 34:21.210]  Where are the goodies?
[34:21.510 --> 34:23.530]  And it's a problem in two different ways.
[34:23.710 --> 34:29.830]  First off, it's tough for us as individuals to know where the stuff is or even how to ask for it if we know that it's in there.
[34:30.110 --> 34:33.990]  And then on top of that, the agency has no actual incentive to tell us, right?
[34:34.130 --> 34:37.250]  They don't want to necessarily say, oh, look, all the good stuff is right here, right?
[34:37.250 --> 34:38.530]  So here's how you should request it.
[34:38.970 --> 34:40.790]  Or what magic words you use to retrieve it.
[34:42.090 --> 34:49.930]  So the solution, like we've sort of been alluding to and what the government addict people seem to be very good at is to get them to tell you by various kind of signaling mechanisms.
[34:50.570 --> 34:57.430]  So, you know, the government addict folks seem to be submitting queries that spur the agency itself to signal where it's interesting stuff is.
[34:57.910 --> 35:01.330]  So examples are identifying restricted or unpublished reports.
[35:01.450 --> 35:04.370]  We mentioned, you know, reports to Congress that haven't been published on your website.
[35:04.370 --> 35:10.590]  But you can actually just send in a FOIA request saying, please send me all of your restricted reports or a list of all of your restricted reports.
[35:10.590 --> 35:13.150]  Or the first five pages of each restricted report.
[35:13.350 --> 35:13.710]  Right.
[35:13.930 --> 35:15.190]  To keep down the duplication costs.
[35:15.190 --> 35:15.450]  To keep down the costs.
[35:16.390 --> 35:18.130]  You can look for missing reports.
[35:18.290 --> 35:18.770]  It's great.
[35:18.910 --> 35:19.950]  You'll see a web page.
[35:20.050 --> 35:22.730]  Oh, here's all the reports that we did in fiscal year 2009.
[35:22.730 --> 35:27.030]  And it's report number one, two, four, five.
[35:27.370 --> 35:27.850]  Like, huh.
[35:28.210 --> 35:29.110]  Where's report three?
[35:29.450 --> 35:30.490]  How about report three, guys?
[35:30.730 --> 35:31.290]  Let's have it.
[35:31.670 --> 35:32.050]  You know.
[35:32.490 --> 35:32.630]  So.
[35:34.110 --> 35:40.090]  You can ask for the, you know, please send me copies of the oldest historical record at your agency that is still classified.
[35:41.670 --> 35:43.610]  You can focus on materials that's withheld.
[35:43.770 --> 35:52.170]  As a way of signaling, right, when you make a request and you've requested some broad set of documents, when you get back something with a whole bunch of redactions, that sort of tells you that's an important area.
[35:52.370 --> 35:53.650]  That's maybe worthy of your attention.
[35:53.870 --> 36:02.170]  If there are documents which have been released previously and they have big sections which are blacked out, you can go back now because the rules are very different than they were under the Bush administration.
[36:02.450 --> 36:04.210]  And they'll tend to release much more.
[36:04.210 --> 36:04.590]  Yeah.
[36:04.790 --> 36:05.450]  This is a key point.
[36:05.830 --> 36:16.850]  Frequently, I will see, even in my own request, and this is another reason why the FBI probably hates me, is I'll look at a request that I filed in 2005 or 2006 and I'll think, well, you know, I bet if I re-request this, I'll get more information now.
[36:17.150 --> 36:21.250]  So, again, another reason from their perspective, wow, this Lapsley guy, just his requests never end.
[36:22.810 --> 36:30.830]  Finally, the other thing is seeking documents that identify other documents, and we've talked a little bit about that, but, you know, getting them to give you lists of documents that are interesting.
[36:30.830 --> 36:40.210]  I should add here, one of the things that happens is the agency FOIA offices are inclined not to release sensitive documents, but they don't mind releasing interesting documents which are not sensitive.
[36:40.350 --> 36:45.310]  And people who request them probably would prefer to get interesting documents, but don't care if they're sensitive or not.
[36:45.510 --> 36:55.530]  So, there's a little bit of an overlap where there's the mutual interests of the FOIA office and the requester do merge, and so that's helpful room for discussion and negotiation, too.
[36:55.530 --> 37:00.030]  When we were working on this talk, Michael sent me an email saying, how do you do a Venn diagram in PowerPoint?
[37:00.850 --> 37:01.110]  So...
[37:02.450 --> 37:06.670]  Okay, so here are some places you can go for more information on filing FOIA requests.
[37:07.110 --> 37:11.510]  The National Security Archive at George Washington?
[37:11.630 --> 37:12.090]  George...
[37:12.090 --> 37:12.530]  Yes.
[37:12.730 --> 37:13.870]  George Washington University.
[37:14.450 --> 37:22.470]  NSArchive.org has a great set of information both on how to file FOIA requests and a lot of examples of national security-related FOIA requests.
[37:22.470 --> 37:25.950]  They have a blog called unredacted.org, I think it is.
[37:26.990 --> 37:32.170]  There's also two websites, getmyfbifile.com and getgrandpasfbifile.com.
[37:32.590 --> 37:39.930]  And these will help you file a FOIA request with the FBI either for yourself, Get My FBI File, or for any deceased person.
[37:40.030 --> 37:41.450]  They don't actually have to be your grandpa.
[37:42.210 --> 37:47.510]  Some people have proposed the website getmyirsauditfile.com as well.
[37:47.770 --> 37:51.390]  That hasn't been implemented yet, but you're welcome to try that as an experiment.
[37:53.610 --> 37:54.950]  Openthegovernment.org is one.
[37:55.510 --> 38:03.650]  There's another group called the... there's an informal group, but it's the FOI-L FOI listserv, and you can Google that.
[38:03.730 --> 38:05.030]  It's out of Syracuse University.
[38:05.270 --> 38:06.390]  It's a very active mailing list.
[38:06.530 --> 38:09.190]  Lots of really good experts on there about all manner of FOIA.
[38:09.330 --> 38:12.490]  And there's an archive which you can search, which has got to be 15 or 20 years old.
[38:12.610 --> 38:17.130]  It's got thousands of postings on any subject you can imagine, and it's worth exploring.
[38:17.930 --> 38:19.970]  And then, of course, governmentaddict.org.
[38:20.110 --> 38:21.430]  We should also mention OGIS.
[38:21.530 --> 38:22.530]  Michael, will you talk about that?
[38:22.750 --> 38:22.990]  Yes.
[38:23.150 --> 38:26.090]  OGIS is the Office of Government Information Services.
[38:26.410 --> 38:32.170]  And they've... they were authorized under the law... the legal change in the law a couple years ago.
[38:32.310 --> 38:34.530]  And they were just set up by the Obama administration.
[38:34.770 --> 38:36.370]  The Bush administration hadn't funded them.
[38:36.810 --> 38:40.010]  And their job is to help FOI requesters who get stuck with agencies.
[38:40.250 --> 38:41.490]  And they're located at the National Archive.
[38:41.490 --> 38:44.670]  If you go to... if you Google OGIS, OGIS, you'll find them.
[38:44.750 --> 38:45.610]  They're very helpful people.
[38:45.710 --> 38:53.410]  And I understand they've been remarkably helpful and effective in fixing blockades between an agency and a requester.
[38:53.570 --> 38:58.230]  And getting the requester the help they need on some difficult conundrums.
[39:00.030 --> 39:00.430]  Okay.
[39:00.690 --> 39:03.430]  So before we take questions, I'd like to leave you with a parting challenge.
[39:03.590 --> 39:04.310]  And then we'll go into questions.
[39:04.470 --> 39:05.630]  The parting challenge is this.
[39:06.450 --> 39:10.170]  I'd like you to take 30 seconds sometime this weekend.
[39:10.390 --> 39:11.090]  Just 30 seconds.
[39:11.250 --> 39:11.950]  That's all I ask.
[39:12.730 --> 39:14.770]  Think about something you've been curious about.
[39:15.130 --> 39:16.030]  A recent news story.
[39:16.230 --> 39:16.790]  Could be anything.
[39:17.310 --> 39:20.510]  Figure out what government agency might have something to do with it.
[39:20.770 --> 39:22.610]  Guess what documents they might have.
[39:22.770 --> 39:23.950]  And then request them.
[39:25.170 --> 39:26.050]  Do it today.
[39:26.370 --> 39:27.070]  Do it tomorrow.
[39:27.190 --> 39:27.550]  Do it Monday.
[39:27.690 --> 39:28.190]  But do it soon.
[39:28.330 --> 39:39.330]  Because one thing I've learned about FOIA is, although FOIA requests may take months or even years to come back to you, guaranteed if you don't request it for two weeks, that's two weeks longer before you're going to have those documents.
[39:39.570 --> 39:39.650]  Right?
[39:39.770 --> 39:42.450]  So I'm constantly looking back saying, I wish I had requested that last year.
[39:42.450 --> 39:44.870]  And how do you find the address of the agency for the FOIA office?
[39:44.970 --> 39:53.310]  You just type in the name of the agency and then FOIA and it will show up the FOIA page for that agency and it will give you the address and probably an email address to send in the request to by email.
[39:53.550 --> 39:54.910]  And two requests.
[39:55.090 --> 39:57.410]  One is post your experiences on the HOPE form.
[39:57.410 --> 39:59.630]  If you do request something, let us know what you get back.
[40:00.030 --> 40:01.870]  And, you know, your mom raised you right.
[40:02.010 --> 40:03.410]  Thank you notes are always a good idea.
[40:03.550 --> 40:06.030]  Not to us, but to the FOIA officers involved.
[40:06.250 --> 40:09.250]  They have really kind of a thankless job and it's really nice to say thanks to them.
[40:09.330 --> 40:11.750]  Phil sends really nice Christmas cards to them.
[40:12.210 --> 40:13.710]  Yeah, but that's only because I'm a suck up.
[40:16.710 --> 40:17.230]  All right.
[40:17.510 --> 40:17.870]  Questions?
[40:19.930 --> 40:20.290]  Hi.
[40:21.410 --> 40:21.990]  Oh, yes.
[40:31.140 --> 40:34.720]  Thank you so much for the charming, entertaining and informative talk.
[40:36.320 --> 40:44.140]  I was kind of piqued by your saying the oldest classified documents and it sounded like you had a little story there, but, you know, I was kind of curious what they were or something like that.
[40:44.220 --> 40:45.640]  It seemed like it'd be kind of a fun little anecdote.
[40:45.840 --> 40:46.040]  Thank you.
[40:46.720 --> 40:54.720]  A lot of them have to do with things like gas masks for horses, gas masks for dogs, things along those lines.
[40:55.780 --> 41:02.700]  So there was recently a number of NSA technical documents posted on Cryptome that had come out of a FOIA request.
[41:02.920 --> 41:08.060]  And after they were posted, someone realized that they'd made a request for the same document a number of years back.
[41:08.700 --> 41:12.140]  And it turned out that the red actions in the two documents were entirely different.
[41:13.000 --> 41:16.580]  And combined, it gave a lot more information than either of them alone.
[41:16.600 --> 41:19.760]  And there was also a lot of interesting information that came out of what was redacted.
[41:20.540 --> 41:27.740]  And I'm wondering how often it's seen that the sort of red actions have a difference of opinion and you get more information from more requests.
[41:28.220 --> 41:32.060]  This is actually quite common and it's a useful thing to watch.
[41:32.320 --> 41:33.280]  One story that...
[41:33.280 --> 41:33.740]  Can I just interrupt?
[41:33.800 --> 41:33.980]  Yes.
[41:33.980 --> 41:36.880]  There are two gentlemen in black who will escort you out of the building.
[41:38.960 --> 41:40.340]  There's one interesting story.
[41:40.500 --> 41:45.700]  Someone had requested a document from the Justice Department about how a certain program was being conducted on diversity.
[41:45.720 --> 41:48.980]  And the Justice Department was particularly recalcitrant about releasing it.
[41:48.980 --> 42:00.140]  They finally were pressured into releasing the portions they could release, but they released a redacted version which meant somebody overwrote some black on the document without taking the underlying metadata out.
[42:00.280 --> 42:01.760]  And of course, the text was still there.
[42:01.840 --> 42:03.400]  Someone copied and pasted it and it was all there.
[42:03.600 --> 42:11.900]  And it showed how ridiculous their redactions were and it caused a big stir because it was clear that they were using exemptions in ways that were totally illegal.
[42:12.180 --> 42:14.560]  And this was a very prominent event.
[42:14.560 --> 42:17.920]  But one comment on that specific thing.
[42:18.120 --> 42:20.520]  That is a thing that does happen, right?
[42:20.580 --> 42:22.240]  The reality is that there are human beings.
[42:22.380 --> 42:27.540]  You know, this goes back to that first page about, you know, Google being an algorithm and a computer versus FOIA being a team of people.
[42:27.980 --> 42:30.460]  People are processing these documents and deciding what to redact.
[42:30.560 --> 42:31.880]  They're going to redact different things.
[42:31.920 --> 42:35.160]  And so if you compare different redacted documents, you'll potentially learn more.
[42:36.500 --> 42:36.940]  Hi.
[42:37.360 --> 42:40.420]  First, I didn't hear a date of when the act was first passed.
[42:40.980 --> 42:44.440]  The act was first passed in the 1960s.
[42:44.540 --> 42:44.920]  Oh.
[42:45.800 --> 42:48.140]  But it's been... it was very weak at the time.
[42:48.280 --> 42:49.220]  And I think it was 67.
[42:49.580 --> 42:50.400]  And it was 66.
[42:50.660 --> 42:52.320]  And it was strengthened in 1974.
[42:52.840 --> 42:56.800]  It's funny because it was strengthened by people who weren't necessarily in favor of it.
[42:56.860 --> 42:59.660]  They made it stronger so it would be killed as an amendment.
[42:59.660 --> 43:00.800]  And it got passed anyway.
[43:00.800 --> 43:02.260]  So it kept getting stronger.
[43:02.440 --> 43:12.060]  And actually, what happened under the end of the Bush administration was they passed an executive order which helped requesters to try to fend off an improvement to the Freedom of Information Act.
[43:12.400 --> 43:16.180]  And then they passed the Freedom of Information Act improvement as well.
[43:16.260 --> 43:16.740]  So you had both.
[43:16.920 --> 43:20.020]  So at the end of the Bush administration, there was a big push that actually helped.
[43:20.180 --> 43:22.840]  But the Obama memo was more effective in making changes.
[43:23.120 --> 43:26.120]  And I was really interested by your idea of the toll booth.
[43:26.120 --> 43:31.780]  And I was wondering if either of you could comment on what you thought the future of the system was.
[43:31.860 --> 43:39.040]  It seems really counterintuitive to pay people to answer each query when you could pay them to build a database.
[43:40.400 --> 43:40.540]  You know?
[43:41.660 --> 43:42.260]  Oh, sure.
[43:42.400 --> 43:42.860]  Hand that to me.
[43:43.500 --> 43:43.900]  Sorry.
[43:43.960 --> 43:45.540]  I mean, I know it's not your fault.
[43:46.200 --> 43:47.960]  So it's a big question, right?
[43:48.600 --> 43:55.300]  And I do think one thing is, as information becomes increasingly digital, I mean, they keep promising us the paperless office, right?
[43:55.520 --> 44:00.620]  But it becomes harder and harder to justify any sort of toll booth or fees or whatever.
[44:02.040 --> 44:04.340]  And so I think you're going to see those tend to go away.
[44:04.340 --> 44:08.120]  And that's going to result in a lot more openness and a lot more information being released.
[44:08.420 --> 44:11.600]  At the same time, there is a problem, right?
[44:11.700 --> 44:12.700]  There is a...
[44:12.700 --> 44:18.540]  Some things actually, I believe, contrary to some people here, I'm sure, in this room, there are some things that are legitimately secret.
[44:18.740 --> 44:22.420]  And that the government may not want to release or may have good reasons for not wanting to release.
[44:22.420 --> 44:29.620]  And so how you deal with this, I don't think we, as a society or they, as a government, have figured that out yet.
[44:29.780 --> 44:31.340]  I think it's going to get better, but...
[44:31.340 --> 44:34.420]  But something they would be able to release to the right person?
[44:35.040 --> 44:35.560]  I'm sorry.
[44:35.640 --> 44:36.000]  Say it again.
[44:36.440 --> 44:40.540]  But they would be willing to release it to someone who's willing to ask for it enough time?
[44:40.740 --> 44:42.940]  The theory is release to one, release to all.
[44:43.020 --> 44:44.840]  If they release it to one person, it goes to everybody.
[44:44.960 --> 44:45.760]  And so...
[44:45.760 --> 44:50.620]  But in some ways, right, from their perspective, well, look, here's some document that we have.
[44:50.620 --> 44:53.800]  We could spend time putting this on the web or whatever, right?
[44:53.940 --> 44:55.260]  But it costs a certain amount of money.
[44:55.400 --> 44:57.940]  Some fractions were sent to dollars or whatever to do that.
[44:58.120 --> 45:01.440]  If instead we let you ask for it, then we know it's actually now important.
[45:01.520 --> 45:02.540]  So now we'll spend the time.
[45:03.100 --> 45:03.380]  So...
[45:03.380 --> 45:04.760]  That's very true what he's saying.
[45:08.360 --> 45:10.740]  Have you ever... testing, testing.
[45:10.980 --> 45:14.360]  Have you ever requested information on how much people you keep employed?
[45:14.360 --> 45:17.360]  And how many manpower has been flowing to your requests?
[45:17.620 --> 45:18.340]  That would be interesting, right?
[45:22.310 --> 45:23.690]  I'd really rather not know that.
[45:23.750 --> 45:24.650]  I'm not going to request that.
[45:25.850 --> 45:28.030]  We didn't ask the government addict people that question.
[45:28.610 --> 45:29.090]  I'm sorry.
[45:29.170 --> 45:29.950]  I got here a little late.
[45:29.950 --> 45:32.250]  So I might not have caught this part of the speech.
[45:32.350 --> 45:38.450]  But if you have a security clearance, you were cleared by someone and there was a process that they went through your background and such.
[45:38.450 --> 45:42.050]  So can you FOIA request your own background check?
[45:42.430 --> 45:42.790]  Yeah.
[45:43.150 --> 45:43.790]  Yeah, certainly.
[45:44.010 --> 45:46.490]  What is the logic behind that and if that's a good idea?
[45:46.830 --> 45:47.770]  It's not only a FOIA.
[45:47.830 --> 45:50.630]  There's built into the law that you can request records about yourself.
[45:50.810 --> 45:51.750]  It's called the Privacy Act.
[45:51.810 --> 45:55.750]  Usually when you're requesting records about yourself, you can get more than if you're requesting about other people.
[45:55.910 --> 46:03.270]  And the background security check, that's something that is written in that you're allowed to get a copy of that at the conclusion of the security clearance.
[46:03.390 --> 46:03.490]  Sure.
[46:03.810 --> 46:04.350]  Thank you very much.
[46:05.910 --> 46:07.210]  To follow up on his question.
[46:07.210 --> 46:12.050]  What agency should you request when you're trying to find information about yourself?
[46:12.610 --> 46:21.110]  And also, do you think politicians are changing the ways that they're keeping information to hide it so it doesn't fall into the hands of these departments and is eventually found by you guys?
[46:21.290 --> 46:22.430]  There's a lot of...
[46:22.430 --> 46:25.210]  Well, we didn't do this, so we're not taking credit for that.
[46:25.330 --> 46:30.070]  But there are a lot of agencies that keep personal information and there's something...
[46:30.070 --> 46:40.230]  If you Google the term Privacy Act Compilations, each agency is supposed to provide on an annual or bi-annual basis a list of all the data sets that they have that have personal information.
[46:40.370 --> 46:41.290]  Actually, it's a huge list.
[46:41.450 --> 46:43.270]  And there's a lot of agencies that are involved.
[46:43.430 --> 46:51.290]  And then if you find those agencies and look up their FOIA office, you can ask for the request under the FOIA or Privacy Act.
[46:52.010 --> 46:58.250]  I might have missed this too, but does information tend to be released in electronic or dead tree form?
[46:58.850 --> 47:00.770]  That's happening much more often now.
[47:01.010 --> 47:03.550]  It's much more often that you see this stuff released.
[47:03.690 --> 47:10.610]  You can tell from the files that are put online, sometimes they're tagged in ways that make it clear they were released in some electronic form.
[47:10.910 --> 47:17.150]  And their agencies are moving more toward these specialized processing systems that allow them to output the stuff electronically.
[47:17.270 --> 47:19.090]  It saves a lot of paper and photocopying.
[47:19.590 --> 47:29.890]  One comment on that is every agency is a little bit different for FOIA because every agency has its own FOIA processes and people who do it and they bought different IT equipment and everything else.
[47:30.070 --> 47:31.850]  So one agency may give you dead trees.
[47:31.870 --> 47:34.050]  Another agency may be very good about emailing.
[47:34.190 --> 47:37.230]  Phil was once told that he couldn't get a paper copy of a record.
[47:37.370 --> 47:41.330]  He had to get a digital copy because their photocopier was broken.
[47:41.970 --> 47:42.730]  The FBI.
[47:42.730 --> 47:43.150]  I'm sorry.
[47:43.250 --> 47:44.550]  The FBI photocopier was broken.
[47:45.790 --> 47:46.570]  True story.
[47:47.610 --> 47:49.870]  We've been saying agency over and over again.
[47:50.290 --> 47:56.150]  Is it correct that FOIA only applies to executive agencies, so not the legislative or judicial branches?
[47:56.350 --> 47:56.590]  Yes.
[47:56.730 --> 48:03.890]  It applies to the executive branch agencies and the federal government that some of the states have... all the states have analogous laws, but some of them are weaker, some of them are stronger.
[48:03.890 --> 48:11.090]  Typically, FOIA is used as a catch-all term or sometimes they say freedom of information law, but each state has some law about that.
[48:11.310 --> 48:28.050]  If you want to run down on all the different states and what laws they have, it's at RCFP, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, has a page called something about tapping official secrets documents or something like that, and it talks about each state.
[48:28.290 --> 48:35.430]  But there's about 70 agencies and a number of components within each agency that have FOIA offices.
[48:35.630 --> 48:36.530]  There's probably about...
[48:36.530 --> 48:39.570]  I'd say about three or four hundred FOIA officers in the government.
[48:43.710 --> 48:50.210]  Do you think there's any credence to the fear that if you make a FOIA request you may actually be drawing attention to yourself?
[48:50.810 --> 49:01.390]  Because that seems to be the reason that people give to me when I encourage them to make a FOIA request, is if they don't have any documents on me, then now they're going to be interested in wondering why.
[49:01.630 --> 49:03.210]  I believe that's entirely folkloric.
[49:03.910 --> 49:04.890]  It's totally untrue.
[49:06.210 --> 49:08.150]  How much should they pay you to give that answer?
[49:08.190 --> 49:08.650]  Except for you.
[49:11.110 --> 49:12.250]  That's a tough one though, right?
[49:12.310 --> 49:13.490]  Because it's proving a negative.
[49:15.050 --> 49:16.570]  But I agree with Michael.
[49:17.430 --> 49:21.910]  Typically, the operational aspects of an agency are quite separate from the FOIA aspects of the agency.
[49:22.090 --> 49:23.770]  So I think you can be reassured on that point.
[49:26.390 --> 49:27.410]  Thank you very much.
[49:40.490 --> 49:43.130]  We'll be doing social engineering in here.
[49:43.650 --> 49:45.150]  Overflow is back in Bell.
[49:45.390 --> 49:47.630]  We're starting social engineering more or less on time.
[49:47.810 --> 49:51.550]  The telephone pioneers are going to go after social engineering back there.
[49:51.810 --> 49:52.250]  Okay?
[49:52.470 --> 49:53.490]  Hang out for just a minute or two.
[49:53.490 --> 49:53.610]  Thank you.
[49:54.230 --> 49:54.530]  Thank you.