In 2013, the National Security Agency rejected a request for Edward Snowden’s emails to superiors, as well as his employee reviews. But a year later, after Snowden claimed he emailed his superiors with concerns, the Office of the Director of Intelligence posted one of those emails to its Tumblr.

Over the past four years, MuckRock’s amazing users have helped make public a lot of government documents, everything from NSA contracts to rejected license plates. On June 7 and 8, we’re opening that data even more, with a first crack at our new API and a journalism hackathon hosted at the MIT Media Lab. Join us!

Earlier this month, MuckRock kicked off a vanity plate rejection project to figure out which plates are too hot for the highway. Thanks to your help, we’ve now covered half of our fifty united states.

MuckRock user Rich Jones recently received documents from the Defense Intelligence Agency regarding North Korea’s nuclear program.

In March 2014, Jonah Peretti, founder of HuffPo and BuzzFeed, spoke at the University of Florida and was paid $40,000 plus “first class expenses.” Thanks to public records law, we have a copy of the presentation, which compares growth of Judaism and Mormonism to demonstrate that “quality religions don’t just go viral on their own”

ProPublica’s Justin Elliott discusses the practical and political murkiness of private communications, email retention and requests for government documents.

It is common knowledge that Janet Napolitano did not use email during her tenure as Homeland Security Secretary. But her closest staffers sent emails on her behalf.

FCC released complaints lodged against college radio stations around Boston, with Harvard University’s station WHRB eliciting the most criticism.

On August 9, 1990, two U.S. Embassy employees trying to enjoy a beer at the Mezhdunarodnaya Hotel in Moscow were interrupted by a stranger. What wouldn’t come out until much later: This stranger was Edward Lee Howard, who slipped past federal agents to defect to the Soviet Union years before. This is the story of how.

Which vanity license plates did your state’s DMV decide were too vulgar, tasteless or otherwise unfit for public display. Help MuckRock find out!

In March, Amy Bennett of OpenTheGovernment.org spoke before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the need to legislate more efficient FOIA processes. For this week’s Requester’s Voice, Bennett spoke with MuckRock about her testimony and her own difficulties submitting FOIA requests to federal agencies.