FOIA - Chicago - BlueDot COVID-19 Tracking (Mayor's Office)
It is a clone of this request.
| Multi Request | FOIA - Chicago - BlueDot COVID-19 Tracking |
| Submitted | April 16, 2020 |
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Communications
From: J Ader
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to the Illinois Freedom of Information Act., I hereby request the following records:
All documents pertaining to BlueDot (https://bluedot.global/). Documents being requested include - but are not limited to - the following:
- Invoices, receipts, and/or requests for the purchase of any BlueDot product/service
- MOUs from BlueDot
- Brochures or product/service specifications regarding BlueDot
- Privacy and/or retention policies regarding BlueDot product/services
- Any/all manuals regarding BlueDot product/services
- Any presentations (PowerPoint documents, slides, and/or video/audio presentations) regarding BlueDot product/services
- Guidelines mentioning BlueDot product/services
- Bulletins mentioning BlueDot product/services
- Briefings mentioning BlueDot product/services
- Memos mentioning BlueDot product/services
- Any/all digitally disseminated publications from your agency mentioning BlueDot product/services
To aid in recovering responsive documents, please see the following news article mentioning the City's use of BlueDot products/services: https://chicago.suntimes.com/coronavirus/2020/4/15/21222472/covid-19-chicago-making-strides-against-coronavirus-data-shows (archived version - https://archive.is/ZLv5c )
An excerpt from the article reads: "..the new data released by the city is the use of mobile devices to track and determine that Chicagoans are, for the most part, adhering to the stay-at-home order. Lightfoot and Arwady said the information was provided by the risk software company BlueDot through the data collection company SafeGraph. They characterized it as “anonymous” data gathered from users of mobile device applications who agreed to let certain applications track their locations.
“We don’t know, nor would we get, specific information about cell phone users,” Lightfoot explained. “So I don’t think there’s any privacy issues. And it’s dependent upon one’s use of applications and then allowing access related to location.”
Arwady said potentially “hundreds of thousands” of mobile devices were tracked as part of the study. A check-in occurred on each of those phones every half-hour, she explained. The study assumed the device’s most common location between midnight and 9 a.m. was its “home.”"
The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.
In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.
Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 5 business days, as the statute requires.
Sincerely,
J Ader
From: Mayor's Office
April 24, 2020
J Ader
Via email at requests@muckrock.com
Dear Mr. Ader,
On behalf of the City of Chicago Office of the Mayor, I am responding to your Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request which was dated April 17, 2020 and received in our office on the same day. At this time, the Mayor’s Office is seeking an extension of five additional working days to respond to the request for one or more of the following reasons identified in 5 ILCS 140/3(e) of FOIA:
( ) the requested records are stored in whole or in part at other locations than the office having charge of the requested records;
( ) the request requires the collection of a substantial number of specified records;
( ) the request is couched in categorical terms and requires an extensive search for the records responsive to it;
( ) the requested records have not been located in the course of routine search and additional efforts are being made to locate them;
(xx) the requested records require examination and evaluation by personnel having the necessary competence and discretion to determine if they are exempt from disclosure under Section 7 of the FOIA or should be revealed only with appropriate deletions;
(xx) the request for records cannot be complied with by the public body within the time limits prescribed by 5 ILCS 140/3(d) without unduly burdening or interfering with the operations of the public body;
(xx) there is need for consultation, which shall be conducted with all practicable speed, with another public body or among two or more components of a public body having a substantial interest in the determination or in the subject matter of the request.
Sincerely,
Tom Skelton
FOIA Officer – Office of the Mayor
From: Mayor's Office
May 1, 2020
J Ader
Via email at requests@muckrock.com
Dear Mr. Ader,
On behalf of the City of Chicago Office of the Mayor (“Mayor’s Office”), I am responding to your Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request which was dated April 17, 2020 and received in our offices on the same day. The Mayor’s Office took a 5-day extension to your request on April 24, 2020. You requested:
Requesting All documents pertaining to BlueDot (https://bluedot.global/). Documents being requested include - but are not limited to - the following:
- Invoices, receipts, and/or requests for the purchase of any BlueDot product/service
- MOUs from BlueDot
- Brochures or product/service specifications regarding BlueDot
- Privacy and/or retention policies regarding BlueDot product/services
- Any/all manuals regarding BlueDot product/services
- Any presentations (PowerPoint documents, slides, and/or video/audio presentations) regarding BlueDot product/services
- Guidelines mentioning BlueDot product/services
- Bulletins mentioning BlueDot product/services
- Briefings mentioning BlueDot product/services
- Memos mentioning BlueDot product/services
- Any/all digitally disseminated publications from your agency mentioning BlueDot product/services
The Mayor’s Office does not have responsive records for the documents described in your list in your FOIA request.
To the extent your request seeks emails, your request is unduly burdensome. Section 3(g) of FOIA provides that “requests for all records falling within a category shall be complied with unless compliance with the request would be unduly burdensome for the complying public body and there is no way to narrow the request and the burden on the public body outweighs the public interest in the information.”
In order to effectively run an email search, the Mayor’s Office needs the following search parameters: (1) the e-mail address(es) or employee name(s) of the account(s) you wish searched; (2) key words you wish to search for; and (3) the timeframe to be searched. Without search parameters, the Mayor’s Office would need to review all department emails to determine whether any are responsive to your request. Such an undertaking would pose an immense burden on the department. Additionally, it is not possible for the Mayor’s Office to run an email search without the parameters listed above.
It is necessary that your FOIA request be narrowed and clarified. If you would like assistance in narrowing your request, please contact me, and I will assist you. Otherwise, for the reasons provided above, the Mayor’s Office is unable to respond to your FOIA request as currently drafted.
If you agree to narrow your request, you must submit a revised written request to my attention. The Mayor’s Office will take no further action or send you any further correspondence unless and until your current request is narrowed in writing. If we do not receive your narrowed request within fourteen calendar days of the date of this letter, your current request will be denied.
In the event that we do not receive a narrowed request and your current FOIA request is therefore denied, you have the right to have a denial reviewed by the Public Access Counselor (PAC) at the Office of the Illinois Attorney General, 500 S. 2nd Street, Springfield, Illinois 62706, (877) 299-3642. You also have the right to seek judicial review of your denial by filing a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court.
Sincerely,
Tom Skelton
FOIA Officer – Mayor’s Office
From: J Ader
Hi,
If you are asking me to narrow my request with a specific time-frame for _all_ responsive document types mentioned, you can use the following time-frame for this: March 27th, 2020 to April 17th, 2020.
If you are solely asking for narrowing of the emails portion I would like to search for the term "BlueDot" within all emails sent/received during this same time-frame March 27th, 2020 to April 17th, 2020 by/to any of the following Office employees:
- LORI E LIGHTFOOT
- JENNIE HUANG BENNETT
- MARGARET DECKER
- RACHEL LEE LEVEN
- TAYLOR DANIELLE LEWIS
- NICHOLAS J LUCIUS
- DANIEL BERMAN LURIE
- SAMIR S MAYEKAR
- CELIA MEZA
- MICHAEL DAVID MILSTEIN
- HAN DINH NGYUEN
- MANUEL PEREZ
- ERIKA SHANELLE POWELL
- YASMIN M RIVERA
- ANEL RUIZ CAMPOS
- PATRICK R SCHWESKA
- WILLIAM SHIH
- TIFFANY S SOSTRIN
- JILL WINEMAN STONE
Please do let me know if you need any further information from my end.
Regards,
J. Ader
From: Mayor's Office
May 11, 2020
J Ader
Via email at requests@muckrock.com
Dear Mr. Ader,
On behalf of the City of Chicago Office of the Mayor, I am responding to your Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request which was dated May 4, 2020 and received in our office on the same day. At this time, the Mayor’s Office is seeking an extension of five additional working days to respond to the request for one or more of the following reasons identified in 5 ILCS 140/3(e) of FOIA:
( ) the requested records are stored in whole or in part at other locations than the office having charge of the requested records;
( ) the request requires the collection of a substantial number of specified records;
( ) the request is couched in categorical terms and requires an extensive search for the records responsive to it;
( ) the requested records have not been located in the course of routine search and additional efforts are being made to locate them;
(xx) the requested records require examination and evaluation by personnel having the necessary competence and discretion to determine if they are exempt from disclosure under Section 7 of the FOIA or should be revealed only with appropriate deletions;
(xx) the request for records cannot be complied with by the public body within the time limits prescribed by 5 ILCS 140/3(d) without unduly burdening or interfering with the operations of the public body;
(xx) there is need for consultation, which shall be conducted with all practicable speed, with another public body or among two or more components of a public body having a substantial interest in the determination or in the subject matter of the request.
Sincerely,
Tom Skelton
FOIA Officer – Office of the Mayor
From: Muckrock Staff
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Illinois Freedom of Information Act. request, copied below, and originally submitted on April 16, 2020. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response.
Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.
From: Mayor's Office
Hi Mr. Ader,
We will need more time to process your request. I ran the email searches you requested, and there are a 53 emails for the Safegraph one and 213 emails for the BlueDot search. We will be producing these emails. However, it can still take some time to review and redact the emails. There are requests submitted before yours as well. The Mayor’s Office responded to your initial April 16 request. The pending requests you have were received on May 4, 2020.
Sincerely,
Tom Skelton
FOIA Officer
City of Chicago – Mayor’s Office, Department of Law
121 N. LaSalle St. #502
Chicago, IL 60602
(312) 744-3844
Thomas.skelton@cityofchicago.org
From: Muckrock Staff
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Illinois Freedom of Information Act. request, copied below, and originally submitted on April 16, 2020. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response.
Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.
From: Mayor's Office
Hi Mr. Ader,
Sorry, we need more time to complete this request. We are in the process of reviewing the responsive emails. I am sorry I cannot give a date we will ready to respond, but I can say that we are close to finishing reviewing the emails. We just need more time to complete that process.
Sincerely,
Tom Skelton
FOIA Officer
City of Chicago – Mayor’s Office, Department of Law
121 N. LaSalle St. #502
Chicago, IL 60602
(312) 744-3844
Thomas.skelton@cityofchicago.org
From: Muckrock Staff
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Illinois Freedom of Information Act. request, copied below, and originally submitted on April 16, 2020. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response.
Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.
From: Mayor's Office
Hi Mr. Ader,
The response I sent yesterday is for both your BlueDot and Safegraph requests. I reviewed the responsive records together, and responded to them both in the letter.
Sincerely,
Tom Skelton
FOIA Officer
City of Chicago – Mayor’s Office, Department of Law
121 N. LaSalle St. #502
Chicago, IL 60602
(312) 744-3844
Thomas.skelton@cityofchicago.org
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