The City of New York’s Law Department says it will need five weeks to work on a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request. In this time, officials might determine an answer. Or they might just figure out how long it will really take.

In most of America, you could buy a home for $270,000. Or, if you were a public documents wonk, you could get all of the 95,000 pages the FBI says may relate to its work with Booz Allen Hamilton in the last five years.

Massachusetts-based disability civil rights activist Eileen Feldman has sharpened her records request skills considerably since filing her first FOIA in 2005. She insists that using public records in activism takes effort and vigilance, and pleads for everyone to demand documents in electronic format.

In 1952, the U.S. Military appears to have commissioned a report from Duke University’s Durham NC School of Medicine on ExtraSensory Perception in Dogs. The final report was 16 pages. 16 pages that have never been, as far as I can tell, released publicly.

After one contractor tore down two wrong houses in a row in July, MuckRock requested files on Fort Worth’s demolition contractors. The city sent back more than 200 pages of contracts, project specs, bids and task orders: a playground for those interested in the public contracting process at the municipal level.

Many defense agencies and military branches are less-than-revealing about their internal practices. But when it comes to what’s appropriate workplace clothing, a number have opened up their collars a bit.

In July, the South Chatham Public Library begged off answering our public records request on the basis that it is a “very, very small library” with limited staff. A bit of digging by one of our industrious readers has revealed that the library is immune from records requests… since it’s not a public library in the typical sense.

With nearly 300 requests under his belt, Phil Mocek is one of MuckRock’s most prolific users. Here, he shares how he’s used public access to show governmental duplicity, gives his advice for first-time requesters, and talks about some of his favorite requests - and what he would have done differently.

After MuckRock called attention to its terminally inoperable fax machine, the Office of the Secretary of Defense has managed to find a replacement. Call off the crowdfunding hounds!

After MuckRock let the world know about the death of the Secretary of Defense FOIA office’s single fax machine, their staff fired back that most requests don’t come in via fax in the first place. Here’s why, in 2013, a broken fax machine still matters.

Documents requested by Heather Akers-Healy from the National Security Agency show it had a contract with the French security researcher VUPEN, whose founder and CEO Chaouki Bekrar puckishly touts himself as the ‘Darth Vader of Cybersecurity.”

The FCC received more than 150 complaints about the VMAs, the lion’s share regarding Miley Cyrus and her ‘daemon’ dance number. Which means ‘twerking’ is now a part of the national historical record.

We caught up with John Cook to talk about his FOIA past, leakers and tips for getting back documents.

The Secretary of Defense’s fax machine is down … possibly until November. In 2013, this shouldn’t be an issue.

One Irving Adler was a a serviceman and federal employee. The other Irving Adler was a renowned activist and author. The FBI had trouble telling the difference.

Many agencies keep track of FOIA requests likely to generate media interest. The Department of Homeland Security list of ‘significant’ requests for 2012 includes everything from undocumented immigrants and UFOs to film cameos and Congressional correspondence.

There’s a novel addition to the anti-transparency toolkit, and it’s raising eyebrows: the rejection-by-association. In two recent cases, U.S. Northern Command and the Department of Justice have rejected one request because another was not paid in full. That the requests were submitted by two different people made little difference.