Chief FOIA officer's recent email (United States Customs and Border Protection)
| Tracking # |
CBP-FO-2025-011200 |
| Multi Request | Chief FOIA officer's recent email |
| Submitted | Oct. 20, 2024 |
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Communications
From: Sai
Dear United States Customs and Border Protection,
On behalf of myself and Fiat Fiendum, I hereby request the following records:
1. The one email in your chief FOIA officer's email inbox or equivalent which was received nearest and before October 19, 2024, midnight Eastern time, regardless of subject matter.
2. The one email in your chief FOIA officer's email spam folder or equivalent which was received nearest and before October 19, 2024, midnight Eastern time, regardless of subject matter.
3. The one email in your chief FOIA officer's sent email folder or equivalent which was sent nearest and before October 19, 2024, midnight Eastern time, regardless of subject matter.
4. The total full-time equivalent count of people who work for your FOIA office as of October 19, 2024.
This request is expressly limited to United States Customs and Border Protection's own FOIA office. Please do not refer it to any other agency or division. This request is expressly not a Privacy Act request, and no PA waiver will be provided.
Please provide the email records in EML, Maildir, MBOX, MIX, MSG, or PST format only — not PDF, Word, image, etc — including all metadata (e.g. full email headers as received/sent) and attachments, without alteration other than narrowly tailored electronic redaction of specifically claimed exemptions that do not affect any part of non exempt information (and, in particular, without rasterization).
Please provide the fourth record as a statement in your response letter, or at your option, as the most readily available record, in original electronic format as currently stored on your computer systems, which includes that information.
Please provide all records either as individual files, or as an unencrypted ZIP file, uploaded to MuckRock. Do not apply any encryption, DRM, or other restriction.
I request fee waiver, because
* Fiat Fiendum is a 501(c)(3) non-profit;
* this request is for public interest, non-commercial purposes;
* these records would give a snapshot of insight into the everyday processes of FOIA offices; and
* these records are being requested in order to conduct a government-wide audit of agencies' FOIA compliance.
In the event that you deny fee waiver, please process this request as-is, because I will not agree to any fees.
Please be sure to provide:
* 5 USC 552(a)(6)(A)(i)(II) FOIA Public Liaison information
* 5 USC 552(a)(6)(A)(i)(III)(aa) appeal information
* 5 USC 552(a)(6)(A)(i)(III)(bb) OGIS information
* 5 USC 552(a)(7)(A) tracking number
* 5 USC 552(a)(7)(B)(ii) completion ETA
Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 20 business days, as the statute requires.
Sincerely,
Sai
President, Fiat Fiendum, Inc.
P.S. Sai is my full legal name.
From: United States Customs and Border Protection
P.S. Sai
n/a
MuckRock News, DEPT MR174866
263 Huntington Ave
Boston, Massachusetts 02115
10/23/2024
CBP-FO-2025-011200
Dear P.S. Sai:
This notice acknowledges receipt of your Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) received on 10/22/2024. Please use the following unique FOIA tracking number CBP-FO-2025-011200 to track the status of your request. If you have not already done so, you must create a SecureRelease account. This is the only method available to check the status of your pending FOIA request.
Provisions of the Act allow us to recover part of the cost of complying with your request. We shall charge you for records in accordance with the DHS FOIA regulations outlined on the DHS website, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/11/22/2016-28095/freedom-of-information-act-regulations. By submitting your request, you have agreed to pay up to $25.00 in applicable processing fees, if any fees associated with your request exceed this amount, CBP shall contact you.
Due to the increasing number of FOIA requests received by this office, we may encounter some delay in processing your request. Consistent with 6 C.F.R. Part 5 § 5.5(a) of the DHS FOIA regulations, CBP processes FOIA requests according to their order of receipt. Although CBP’s goal is to respond within 20 business days of receipt of your request, FOIA does permit a 10-day extension of this time period in certain circumstances pursuant to 6 C.F.R. Part 5 § 5.5(c).
CBP’s FOIA Division is working hard to reduce the amount of time necessary to respond to FOIA requests. We truly appreciate your continued patience.
For additional information please consult CBP FOIA website please click on FOIA Act Resources or visit http://www.cbp.gov/site-policy-notices/foia.
Please note that this message has been sent from an unmonitored e-mail account. Any messages sent to this account will not be read.
Sincerely,
U.S. Customs and Border Protection
From: Sai
Dear CBP,
Thank you for your email.
My name is just Sai. "P.S." means "post scriptum". Please update your records accordingly.
My request explicitly denied consent to fees.
Sincerely,
Sai
From: United States Customs and Border Protection
11/26/2024
Request Number: CBP-FO-2025-011200
Dear P.S. Sai:
Please use the following link to navigate to your documents. This link will be available for 365 days.
To retrieve the records associated with this request use this link Released Documents for Request CBP-FO-2025-011200 or enter https://www.securerelease.us/request-details/4B6F1577-3E50-4EA7-B299-8C248CBB681D/2 in your browser’s address bar. (https://www.securerelease.us/request-details/4B6F1577-3E50-4EA7-B299-8C248CBB681D/2)
Please login or create a new user account using the email address associated with your records request: requests@muckrock.com
From: United States Customs and Border Protection
P.S. Sai
n/a
MuckRock News, DEPT MR174866
263 Huntington Ave
Boston, Massachusetts 02115
11/26/2024
CBP-FO-2025-011200
Dear P.S. Sai:
A search of CBP databases produced records responsive to your Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request CBP-FO-2025-011200, requesting records maintained by CBP.
CBP has determined that the responsive records are partially releasable, pursuant to Title 5 U.S.C. § 552 and have applied the appropriate exemptions notated below:
Exemption Summary:
(b)(6) and (b)(7)(C)
Pursuant to DHS Instruction 262-11-004, FOIA Officers at DHS have been instructed to withhold personally identifiable information (PII) and sensitive personally identifiable information (SPII) of DHS personnel unless a determination is made that the disclosure does not raise security or privacy concerns, or if those concerns are outweighed by any public interest in that information. This policy is available online. Under this policy, the names of senior leaders, spokespersons, and political appointees are generally releasable. With respect to this FOIA request, DHS may have applied FOIA Exemption 6 to protect PII of DHS employees, including names and contact information. To the extent that has DHS withheld employee PII within these records, it has been determined that the employee(s) has/have substantial and legitimate privacy interests and that these interests are not outweighed by any public interest in the operations of the Department.
For your information, Congress excluded three discrete categories of law enforcement and national security records from the requirements of the FOIA. See 5 U.S.C. 552(c). This response is limited to those records that are subject to the requirements of the FOIA. This is a standard notification that is given to all our requesters and should not be taken as an indication that excluded records do, or do not, exist.
You may notice a recent date on the attached records. This is the date our processor queried the record in response to your FOIA request. For clarity, it is not the date the agency first created the record.
The following item(s) also apply to your request:
• Approximately [ 0 ] pages were withheld in their entirety.
• Fees: In the processing of this FOIA request, no fees are being assessed.
• Other: No records exist for the spam or outgoing folders.
This completes the CBP response to your request. You may contact CBP's FOIA Public Liaison, Charlyse Hoskins, by sending an email via your SecureRelease account, mailing a letter to 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW MS 1181, Washington DC, 20229 or by calling 202-325-0150. (If you need telecommunication relay service (TRS) assistance to communicate with the CBP FOIA Office and you are in the United States, please dial 711 to obtain TRS assistance and notify the Communications Assistant that you want to contact the CBP FOIA Office at the telephone number (202) 325-0150). The FOIA Public Liaison is able to assist in advising on the requirements for submitting a request, assist with narrowing the scope of a request, assist in reducing delays by advising the requester on the type of records to request, suggesting agency offices that may have responsive records and receive questions or concerns about the agency’s FOIA process. Please notate file number CBP-FO-2025-011200 on any future correspondence to CBP related to this request.
If you are not satisfied with the response to this request, you have a right to appeal the final disposition. Should you wish to do so, you must file your appeal within 90 days of the date of this letter following the procedures outlined in the DHS regulations at Title 6 C.F.R. §5.8. Please include as much information as possible to help us understand the grounds for your appeal. You should submit your appeal via your SecureRelease account . If you do not have computer access, you may send your appeal and a copy of this letter to: FOIA Appeals, Policy and Litigation Branch, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, 90 K Street, NE, 10th Floor, Washington, DC 20229-1177. Your envelope and letter should be marked "FOIA Appeal." Copies of the FOIA and DHS regulations are available at www.dhs.gov/foia. Additional information can be found at the following link https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/assets/documents/2019-Dec/definitions-exemptions-foia_0.pdf.
Additionally, you have a right to seek dispute resolution services from the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) which mediates disputes between FOIA requesters and Federal agencies as a non-exclusive alternative to litigation. If you are requesting access to your own records (which is considered a Privacy Act request), you should know that OGIS does not have the authority to handle requests made under the Privacy Act of 1974. You may contact OGIS as follows: Office of Government Information Services, National Archives and Records Administration, 8601 Adelphi Road-OGIS, College Park, Maryland 20740-6001, e-mail at ogis@nara.gov; telephone at 202-741-5770; toll free at 1-877-684-6448; or facsimile at 202-741-5769. Please note that contacting the CBP FOIA Public Liaison or OGIS does not stop the 90-day appeal clock and is not a substitute for filing an administrative appeal.
Please note that this message has been sent from an unmonitored e-mail account. Any messages sent to this account will not be read.
Sincerely,
U.S. Customs and Border Protection