Deliberative process and classified exemption claims about old records (U.S. Department Of Agriculture, Office of the Secretary)

Dear U.S. Department Of Agriculture, Office of the Secretary,

On behalf of myself and Fiat Fiendum, I hereby request the following records under 5 USC 552(a)(3), as to your Department, including every component or otherwise associated agency, corporation, or other establishment of the executive branch within the meaning of 5 USC 552(f)(1):

1. all FOIA determinations that have ever made a (b)(5) deliberative process privilege exemption claim, whenever issued, about records that were created before Jan. 1, 2002
2. all FOIA determinations that have ever made a (b)(1) classified records exemption claim — including a Glomar "refuse to confirm or deny" response — whenever issued, about records that were created before Jan. 1, 2016
3. a CSV formatted spreadsheet of all such determinations/Glomars, including the FOIA tracking ID, request, exemptions/Glomar claimed, component agency, number of records found, and all other information available in your current or at-the-time FOIA tracking software or other FOIA processing records held in bulk, database, or spreadsheet form

To the extent that you are unable to narrow your search based on the age of the underlying records, please ignore the text ", about records that were created before before Jan. 1, 2002" in item 1, and ", created before Jan. 1, 2016" in item 2 — i.e. you may have false positives (additionally disclosing exemptions about records that are from 2002 or later), but not false negatives (failing to disclose exemptions about records that are from before 2002, e.g. because your search fails to include exemption letters about records whose creation date you didn't track). For item 1, to the extent that you are unable to narrow your search based on the subtype of (b)(5) exemption claimed, please ignore the text "deliberative process privilege" — i.e. include all (b)(5) claims. If you are unable to do either without false negatives, item 1 would read "all FOIA determination letters that have ever made a (b)(5) exemption claim, whenever issued".

This request has no time or subject limit whatsoever, other than that the cutoff date is the date of your search. Please mind that items 1 & 2 refer to the age of the underlying record for which an exemption (including Glomar) claim was made — not to the age of the exemption claim or date of the FOIA request that triggered it. The dates of the request or exemption claim are irrelevant. For example, a 2015 (b)(5) deliberative process denial of a FOIA request made in 2010 about records created in 2000 would be in scope.

For all responsive records, I request:
a. all parts of the record (i.e. no portion of a record with some responsive portion may be considered "non-responsive")
b. all record metadata, such as dates on which they were drafted, passed, went into effect, withdrawn, or similar events; person(s) / office(s) responsible; authors; IDs; revision numbers; email headers; hyperlinks; structural metadata; email addresses; comments; revision history; timestamps; file names and contents; pagination or lack thereof; format specific metadata (e.g. particular to Word, PDF, or paper files); filing location, labeling, & organization; etc.
c. if any classification applies, mandatory declassification review (MDR) under E.O. 13526, and the result of the MDR, including any declassified records.

# Form & format

## Native email format & minimal redaction

Please provide all email records in EML, Maildir, or MBOX 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 all other records in their original electronic format (if electronic), and as one 300dpi color scan PDF per logical document, staple, paperclip, or file folder (whichever is most narrow) if the original is in paper format.

Please note that FOIA requires you to service the maximum extent of my request that can be done via e.g. partial redaction of exempt material. If you believe some portions of a record to be exempt because it contains classified information (18 USC 798), please provide a version of the record redacted to the minimum extent necessary to remove exempt information, along with adequate information to describe the reason for each specific exemption, and without altering any non exempt information (including metadata).

## No new records; electronic & original format

This request does not ask you to create new records.

If you determine that a response would require creating a new record that you do not want to create, please first contact me by email with an explanation of what records you have that would most closely match the information requested and might be acceptable substitutes, so that we can reasonably tailor the request.

In particular, I specifically request that you do not create new documents in response to this request that are modifications of a digital record, such as page-view images, print views, scans, or the like. No such creation or substitution is authorized by FOIA.

However, if the same or similar records are held in both electronic and paper formats, this request includes both the paper and electronic versions. The paper version and the digital version are distinct records, and each may contain distinct information such as handwritten or other markings on the paper copy and embedded metadata in the electronic version. I specifically request both the original, electronic format record, and (if it contains any additional markings) the paper record.

To the extent that the original native electronic format is proprietary or otherwise not in format accessible by widely available, open source software, I also request
1. an export of the proprietary format into a standard, open format, and
2. all proprietary software and documentation necessary to use and understand the original, proprietary format records.

## Rehab Act § 508 compliance

I am partially blind. In accordance with 5 USC 552(a)(3)(B & C) (E-FOIA), Rehabilitation Act § 508, and the FOIA Improvement Act, I require that you respond using original, native format, electronic, machine-processable, accessible, open, and well structured records to the maximum extent possible — for both the content of your response, and any communications about the request (such as response letters).

Please make all correspondence pursuant to this request — including notification and responsive records — by email, with native electronic format records, as specified in the request. I do not authorize you to send anything to me by physical mail unless I specifically state otherwise.

## Compression, passwords, and uploading large files

Multiple files may be sent in a combined, compressed form using standard ZIP, TAR, GZIP, BZIP2, and/or RAR formats, or sent as separate files, at your discretion.

Do not use any password on any files, including ZIP files etc., unless a password was present in the original, native format (in which case, leave it unaltered, and send me the password). Do not respond using ZixCorp "Secure Mail" or any other method that "expires" records from being available. Use only actual email and direct attachments, or upload using the link below, unless I explicitly request otherwise.

If there are any files you prefer not to transfer by email (e.g. if they are >10MB), please upload them to me via the link listed below my signature. Doing so is secure, completely free to you, and I will be notified of the upload. If that is insufficient, I can also provide Google Drive, Dropbox, SFTP, rsync, or similar provisions that will let you easily upload hundreds of gigabytes of data to me for free.

## Redaction of repeatedly occurring content

When redacting any content that appears more than once in the full set of responsive records, please assign a replacement identifier for each, so that your redaction does not obfuscate the commonality.

For example, suppose that responsive records include the names Alice, Bob, and Chris, and you determine that each of those names are redactable (e.g. under (b)(7) or (b)(6)). Rather than redacting each with only the text "(b)(7)(C)", replace each instance of "Alice" with "(b)(7)(D) - confidential source 1", each instance of "Bob" with "(b)(7)(C) - US congressional aide 2", each instance of "Chris" with "(b)(7)(C) - US congressional aide 3", etc. This would vindicate your narrow interest in withholding the person's identity, while not withholding the facts of commonality between occurrences, nor the relevant natures of each redacted person, which you would not have justification to withhold.

Please use reasonably descriptive identifiers. For instance, if Alice's name is not redacted but her personal cellphone number is, and that cellphone number appears e.g. both in her email signature and elsewhere by itself, it should in both cases be redacted with the same descriptive identifier, such as "Alice's cell #" (or "confidential source 1's cell #" if her name is redacted, as above).

For PDFs, this can be specified in the margins if the identifier does not fit in the original space. For more native electronic files, like EML, this can be done by direct editing. If space or file format does not permit you to do so inline or in margins or equivalent, then please use a short code (e.g. "[#52]", and provide a table matching codes to full replacement identifiers in your response letter.

If you make any such redactions, please keep but do not provide a table matching codes/identifiers to the redacted content, for use in case your redaction is examined or overturned on appeal or in litigation.

This is a form and format request pertaining to your process of redaction. Because it only applies in situations when you have already exercised the voluntary decision to alter the records from the original form requested, you have necessarily waived any objection to this section "creating a new record", since your act of redaction itself already "makes a new record" in that limited sense. This is only about how you do a redaction you have already decided to make.

This provision limits the scope of your redaction to the minimum possible extent, so that even if you decide to withhold some particular piece of content, you do not also withhold the fact of its being the same as the same content appearing elsewhere, or the kind of thing redacted. That fact is itself metadata that is explicitly requested as part of this request.

If you decide that the mere fact of two pieces of content being the same is itself withholdable, then please redact it using an identifier that encodes only the reason, and provide a table matching those reason-only identifiers to justifications in your response letter.

# Rolling updates

Please provide me with rolling (incremental) updates, rather than having the entirety of the request be blocked until fully completed.

Please preserve all responsive records that you currently hold, pending release, particularly ones that are currently held in electronic form or format.

Please prioritize rolling updates based on what is most readily available, i.e. such that you release as the greatest amount of records in the fastest time.

# Fee waiver

I request fee waiver, because
* Fiat Fiendum is a 501(c)(3) non-profit;
* this request is for public interest, non-commercial, journalistic purposes;
* by definition, you have already found and made determinations for all records requested;
* your FOIA office itself holds all or nearly all the records for both items;
* I am requesting records to be provided exclusively in electronic format, with no paper copies, so you should incur no actual costs; and
* Congress determined in the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016, Puib. L. 114-195 that 25 year old (b)(5) deliberative process records are of public interest, and the President determined in EO 13526 that 10–25 year old classified records should be declassified, and the records requested would serve as an index for a follow-up request for all such records, to make them widely available.

# Request tracking numbers and estimated completion date

Upon receipt, and in every followup response, please state your tracking number(s) for this request, as well as your specific estimated completion date. 5 USC 552(a)(7).

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your initial response to this request within 20 business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,
Sai
President, Fiat Fiendum, Inc.
Fiat Fiendum is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt corporation devoted to public interest journalism, government transparency and accountability, individuals' civil rights, and related issues.

P.S. My full legal name is just Sai. Please use no title for me.