scholarly journals Do political donors have greater access to government officials? Evidence from a FOIA field experiment with US municipalities

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas R. Jenkins ◽  
Michelangelo Landgrave ◽  
Gabriel E. Martinez
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Field Experiment ◽  
Municipal Government ◽  
Wait Time ◽  
Freedom Of Information ◽  
Preferential Treatment ◽  
Freedom Of Information Act ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
State Laws ◽  
The Us

Whether political donors have greater access to government officials is a perennial question in politics. Using a freedom of information act (FOIA) compliance field experiment with US municipalities in California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Pennsylvania, we fail to find evidence that political donors have greater access to government officials compared to engaged citizens. We contribute to the lobbying literature by testing for preferential treatment towards political donors in municipal government. Consistent with the extant FOIA literature, we do find that a formal FOIA request increases compliance rates and decreases wait time before an initial reply. This is an important contribution because, although many polities have FOIA laws, it cannot be taken for granted that FOIA laws will lead to transparency in practice. Testing the effectiveness of FOIA laws in the US is particularly important because state laws vary substantially.

The Colossus Rebuild

Colossus ◽  
2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Sale
Keyword(s):  
National Archive ◽  
Science Museum ◽  
Freedom Of Information ◽  
Post Office ◽  
Freedom Of Information Act ◽  
Cad System ◽  
The Us ◽  
First Time ◽  
Second World ◽  
Original Construction

In 1991, some colleagues and I started the campaign to save Bletchley Park from demolition by property developers. At this time I was working at the Science Museum in London restoring some early British computers. I believed it would be possible to rebuild Colossus, but nobody else believed me. In 1993, I gathered together all the information available. This amounted to no more than eight 1945 wartime photographs of Colossus (some of which are printed in this book), plus brief descriptions by Flowers, Coombs, and Chandler, and—crucially—circuit diagrams which some engineers had kept, quite illegally, as engineers always do! I spent nine months poring over the wartime photographs, using a sophisticated modern CAD system on my PC to recreate machine drawings of the racks. I found that, fortunately, sufficient wartime valves were still available, as were various pieces of Post Office equipment used in the original construction. In July 1994, His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent opened the Bletchley Park Museum and inaugurated the Colossus rebuild project. At that time I had not managed to obtain any sponsorship for the project, so my wife Margaret and I decided to put our own money into it, to get it started. We both felt that if the effort was not made immediately there would be nobody still alive to help us with memories of Colossus. Over the next few years various private sponsors came to our aid and some current and retired Post Office and radio engineers formed the team that helped me in the rebuild. In 1995, the American National Security Agency was forced by application of the Freedom of Information Act to release about 5000 Second World War documents into the US National Archive. A list of these documents was put onto the Internet. When I read it I was amazed to see titles like ‘The Cryptographic Attack on FISH’. I obtained copies of these documents and found that they were invaluable reports written by American servicemen seconded to Bletchley Park when America entered the war. I was also fortunate enough to be given access to the then still classified General Report on Tunny (parts of which are published for the first time in this book).

Sharing Knowledge With the Government

2019 ◽  
pp. 143-158
Author(s):  
G. Scott Erickson
Keyword(s):  
Freedom Of Information ◽  
Personal Privacy ◽  
Freedom Of Information Act ◽  
Privacy Concerns ◽  
Business Information ◽  
Private Knowledge ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
The Government ◽  
Information Requests

This chapter assesses the reliability and predictability of government departments as partners of private knowledge management systems. The specific topic is knowledge availability under the US Freedom of Information Act, but the general implications apply to governments at all levels around the world that hold business data, information, or knowledge assets. By comparing processes related to US freedom of information requests across departments and across time, separated by two dramatic changes in presidential administrations and attitudes toward governmental openness, this study examines the relative reliability of agency processes. In particular, reports on the handling of confidential business information provide us with specific insights on this topic as do reports on releases of records with personal privacy concerns. In the end, there appears to be little predictability in the process, even with clear instruction from the highest levels.

From our Own Correspondent … the Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) in Context: FoIA, Privacy and Public Records

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 108-113
Author(s):  
Dave Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Complete Picture ◽  
Freedom Of Information ◽  
Freedom Of Information Act ◽  
Public Records ◽  
The Past ◽  
Private Collection ◽  
The Us ◽  
Public Record ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The U.S

The US Freedom of Information Act is a tool that can be used with success, but the current climate makes it less effective than it has been in the past. Privacy Acts are set up to protect the citizenry from untoward governmental scrutiny, but even with current legislation in place private collection of information from governmental public record resources and a variety of private resources can compile a relatively complete picture of many individuals in the U.S, from where Dave Rogers from Sidley Austin in Chicago sends us this report.

Tweeted, deleted: An exploratory study of the US government’s digital memory holes

2020 ◽  
pp. 146144482093403
Author(s):  
Muira McCammon
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Freedom Of Information ◽  
Government Agencies ◽  
Freedom Of Information Act ◽  
Government Employees ◽  
Digital Memory ◽  
The Us

Deletion is part of the Internet’s history and predates Twitter. Today, research on the laws underlying and facilitating government social media use and deletion practices has remained limited. The question of how government agencies create their own Twitter archives and subsequently institutionalize cultural memory has also been largely unexplored. Drawing on a US case study, I argue that the lack of a standardized federal policy has led to the creation of myriad digital “memory holes” of varying porosities. I show that, when systematically drafted and deployed, research based on the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) can serve as a generative method of unearthing deleted tweets and memory narratives that might otherwise be inaccessible. Finally, I build on the US case study by offering pathways for other new media scholars to examine and trace tweeting and deleting by government employees in other jurisdictions.

scholarly journals Spatiotemporal contact density explains the disparity of COVID-19 spread in urban neighborhoods

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rajat Verma ◽  
Takahiro Yabe ◽  
Satish V. Ukkusuri
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Urban Neighborhoods ◽  
Structural Equations ◽  
Mobility Patterns ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Contact Density ◽  
Interpersonal Contact ◽  
Mobility Data ◽  
Point Of Interest ◽  
The Us

AbstractThe rapid early spread of COVID-19 in the US was experienced very differently by different socioeconomic groups and business industries. In this study, we study aggregate mobility patterns of New York City and Chicago to identify the relationship between the amount of interpersonal contact between people in urban neighborhoods and the disparity in the growth of positive cases among these groups. We introduce an aggregate spatiotemporal contact density index (CDI) to measure the strength of this interpersonal contact using mobility data collected from mobile phones, and combine it with social distancing metrics to show its effect on positive case growth. With the help of structural equations modeling, we find that the effect of CDI on case growth was consistently positive and that it remained consistently higher in lower-income neighborhoods, suggesting a causal path of income on case growth via CDI. Using the CDI, schools and restaurants are identified as high contact density industries, and the estimation suggests that implementing specific mobility restrictions on these point-of-interest categories is most effective. This analysis can be useful in providing insights for government officials targeting specific population groups and businesses to reduce infection spread as reopening efforts continue to expand across the nation.

The Shortcomings of Transparency for Democracy

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (11) ◽  
pp. 1670-1678
Author(s):  
Michael Schudson
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Public Information ◽  
Freedom Of Information ◽  
Government Information ◽  
Personal Privacy ◽  
Freedom Of Information Act ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Information Transparency ◽  
Democratic Government ◽  
The U.S

“Transparency” has become a widely recognized, even taken for granted, value in contemporary democracies, but this has been true only since the 1970s. For all of the obvious virtues of transparency for democracy, they have not always been recognized or they have been recognized, as in the U.S. Freedom of Information Act of 1966, with significant qualifications. This essay catalogs important shortcomings of transparency for democracy, as when it clashes with national security, personal privacy, and the importance of maintaining the capacity of government officials to talk frankly with one another without fear that half-formulated ideas, thoughts, and proposals will become public. And when government information becomes public, that does not make it equally available to all—publicity is not in itself democratic, as public information (as in open legislative committee hearings) is more readily accessed by empowered groups with lobbyists able to attend and monitor the provision of the information. Transparency is an element in democratic government, but it is by no means a perfect emblem of democracy.

Information Rights and the Internet

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Data Protection ◽  
Common Law ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Freedom Of Information ◽  
Freedom Of Information Act ◽  
Digital Rights ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Common ◽  
Online Traffic

Lord Sumption has said that the Freedom of Information Act 2000 was a landmark enactment of great constitutional significance. Chapter 1 identifies the separate regimes for obtaining access to information: the FOI Act; the Environmental Information Regulations; and the Data Protection Act 1998. It explains the differences between them and the part which is also played by the common law. Following Edward Snowden’s revelations about the surveillance undertaken by the US, the chapter outlines the conflict between surveillance, privacy, and information rights. The chapter concludes, first, by looking at the European Court’s decision in the Digital Rights case that Directive 2006/24/EC is invalid. It provided for the mass retention and disclosure to policing and security authorities of individuals’ online traffic data. Second, the chapter looks at the Court’s decision in the Google Spain case that, on the internet, an individual has a right to be forgotten.

The US Freedom of Information Act

1991 ◽  
Vol 32 (7) ◽  
pp. 25-25
Author(s):  
Ruth H Londman
Keyword(s):  
Freedom Of Information ◽  
Freedom Of Information Act ◽  
The Us

Troubling histories: Re-viewing documentary production and surveillance through the Freedom of Information Act

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-353
Author(s):  
Daniel Grinberg
Keyword(s):  
American Art ◽  
Freedom Of Information ◽  
Security Measures ◽  
Freedom Of Information Act ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government ◽  
State Surveillance ◽  
Production History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Affective Dimensions

This article examines the variety of risks that critical independent filmmakers have confronted to expose government abuses. It considers the threats to the documentarians and their documents, as they chronicle incidents of state surveillance while they are themselves under state surveillance. It does so by constructing an alternative production history of Laura Poitras’ (2014) documentary film Citizenfour in relation to the antecedent case of Emile de Antonio, Mary Lampson, and Haskell Wexler’s 1976 film Underground (Whitney Museum of American Art, 2016). These production histories are primarily based on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) files that the filmmakers extracted from the US government agencies that targeted them. The article argues that these official files provide an under-explored vantage on the logistical and affective dimensions of making a dissident film. In addition, this article re-views the films the documentarians created under precarious labour conditions to investigate how state intimidation and interference perceptibly impacted these archival records. It examines how the mechanisms of censorship and filmmakers’ counteractive security measures registered significant visible traces in the films. Consequently, it argues that the troubling histories captured in both the files and the films can also trouble the authority of official historiography.

Presidential Privilege and the Freedom of Information Act

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin M. Baron
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Public Information ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Freedom Of Information ◽  
Freedom Of Information Act ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Government Secrecy

Executive privilege (EP) as a political tool has created a grey area of constitutional power between the legislative and executive branches. By focusing on the post-WWII political usage of executive privilege, this research utilizes a social learning perspective to examine the power dynamics between Congress and the president when it comes to government secrecy and public information. Social learning provides the framework to understand how the Cold War's creation of the modern American security state led to a paradigm shift in the executive branch. This shift altered the politics of the presidency and impacted relations with Congress through extensive use of EP and denial of congressional requests for information. When viewed through a social learning lens, the institutional politics surrounding the development of the Freedom of Information Act is intricately entwined with EP as a political power struggle of action-reaction between the executive and legislative branches. Using extensive archival research, this historical analysis examines the politics surrounding the modern use of executive privilege from Truman through Nixon as an action-reaction of checks on power from the president and Congress, where each learns and responds based on the others previous actions. The use of executive privilege led to the Freedom of Information Act showing how policy can serve as a congressional check on executive power, and how the politics surrounding this issue influence contemporary politics.

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