Federal Court to FBI: Learn To Use Google
The D.C. Circuit today criticized the FBI for failing to use Google in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, which requires government agencies to release information unless "reasonable efforts" show that the information is not available to the public.
The case involved a request for 35 year-old tapes recorded during a Lousiana mob investigation. The FBI claimed that they could refuse to release the tapes under an exception to FOIA which allows information to be withheld when it could "reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal property." According to the FBI, release of the tapes would invade the privacy of the persons taped.
As the court explained, a person's interest in their own privacy is "diminished where the individual is deceased," and thus the FBI's right to refuse disclosure of the tapes hinged upon whether or not they made reasonable efforts to determine if the people on the tape were dead.
The court found the FBI's efforts lacking:
Why, in short, doesn't the FBI just Google the two names? Surely, in the Internet age, a "reasonable alternative" for finding out whether a prominent person is dead is to use Google (or any other search engine) to find a report of that person's death.10 Moreover, while finding a death notice for the second speaker -- the informant -- may be harder (assuming that he was not prominent), Googling also provides ready access to hundreds of websites collecting obituaries from all over the country, any one of which might resolve that speaker's status as well.
As Howard Bashman notes there's no word yet on whether the FBI has to use Wikipedia.
Written By:bloppo On August 22, 2006 3:18 PM Written By:Egbert On August 23, 2006 2:37 AM
Bloppo: Can you really call it a tyranny when the oil executives are elected by the trailer trash? If enough people are stupid enough to vote for them, there isn't much that can be done. You should blame the Democrats really. For the sake of standing up for their principles they defended unpopular fringe rights like gay marriage and abortion, and managed to not get elected. If they were willing to pander to the religious, they could accomplish the much more important mission of stopping corruption and the selling of our country to China and the multinational corporations.
Ahh Egbert, do you truly believe that the cries of the religiously oppressive should hold sway over our country? It is the republicans that should be ashamed for using religous issues to get elected in a country thats government should not be swayed by religion. Promoting of religious beliefs and ideals is dangerous as this country is not supposed to support only the christian purist beliefs.
The federal government is a greater threat to the common American's freedoms than all the terrorists across the world.
Know your true enemy and be prepared.
The Founders, in their writings, told us what must be done.