Brian Sparks’ FOIA request for the FBI’s file on an American anarchist killed while fighting the Islamic State was rejected on grounds that it was part of “pending or prospective law enforcement proceeding,” or the “open investigation” exemption. What that investigation is is anyone’s guess.

One report of wage theft made to the city of Boston and recently released through a public records request sheds light on how businesses get away with it.

Over the last several years, nearly one in five wage theft complaints from Boston workers to the Attorney General’s Office involved restaurants, recently released documents indicate. The documents cover complaints made after 2012, when the US Department of Labor found that dozens of Boston-area restaurants owed their workers nearly $1.3 million, or roughly $2,600 to each worker.

In the last couple years, the People’s Republic has adopted a surprisingly undemocratic approach to public records, charging for search and processing fees that other municipalities were willing to waive - even when the task took as little as six minutes.

In response to a recent Freedom of Information Act request seeking information on potential abuse of Census records, the FOIA officer sent a letter saying “[t]he U.S. Census Bureau neither confirms nor denies the existence of any records responsive to your request.” This makes Census Bureau just the latest in a string of unlikely agencies to handing out the infamous GLOMAR exemption.