Despite repeatedly refusing to release privacy impact assessments regarding its drone us — which legally must be public by default — the Bureau claims to already be in line with the president’s standards, which include a public disclosure timeline and broad principles for protecting civil liberties.

The FBI has released its file on Congressman Samuel Dickstein, who was among the founding members of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. While he was in the position, it has been alleged that he was simultaneously a Soviet agent for the NKVD - a detail not mentioned in file, which consists mostly of three decades of mutual back-patting between Dickstein and J. Edgar Hoover.

When CCA first opened a prison in Estancia, home of the last hanging in New Mexico, the Detention Facility was responsibly for just under 300 offenders. Now it clocks in at over 900 inmates, over half the town’s population.

MuckRock worked with the Pioneer Institute to get a copy of the contract between the MBTA and Keolis. Since the snow – and the scrutiny – hit, we’ve been reading over to see what sort of glaring policy missteps we can find, but it’s simply too big a job for us to do on our own.

Cortland, New York, is a small city where nothing much happens. The newspaper is about ten pages long, and sometimes whole pages are devoted to not only their high school’s honor roll, but that of the next town over as well. But ten years ago, controversy struck, one with all the workings of a Lifetime teen drama: A number of kids were suspended from extracurricular activities for appearing in MySpace photos holding red cups. Parents and students rallied together and stood up against the administration, striking a blow for online privacy and varsity football.

A nearly five-year old request is put on hiatus while the most technically advanced fighting force in world takes on a malfunctioning external hard drive.

A handful of key disclosures in recent weeks shed new light on the FBI’s involvement in cell-site simulator deployments nationwide.

MuckRock has received a copy of “American Sniper” Chris Kyle’s military record, consisting of several glowing evaluations and his discharge papers.

The Massachusetts lottery last year distributed nearly $975 million in revenue to communities. Contributing to that sum, Keno remains a consistent draw in some communities, though the returns may not reflect the effort put in.

Presidents tend to be a bit different than most people, and appropriately enough, Presidential records are a bit different than most records. Here’s what to know before you FOIA a POTUS.

In that spirit of commiseration, MuckRock is proud to announce our partnership with EFF and the Sunlight Foundation for the first-annual “Foilies” Awards Gala during Sunshine Week in DC.

The FBI has flown unmanned aerial vehicles since at least 2005, and has fought in court for the past year and change to divulge as little information about them as possible. While the Bureau and its privacy overseers have released hundreds of heavily redacted pages, they have seemingly conflicting answers as to whether one crucial set of legally-mandated privacy documents even exists at all.

Five years ago today, MuckRock was born — or, at least, the domain was registered. Mitchell Kotler and I started with just an idea, an experiment: What if we built a website that let anyone ask a question to their government, and we helped them get an answer?

Months into a survey into what Massachusetts towns know about their natural gas leaks, Brookline is the first town to release substantive responsive documents. The results suggest that other towns should take notice.

Department guidelines established in 2012 allow officers to comb social networks for information and investigative leads, and even to adopt online aliases, given proper authorization and bookkeeping.

The DEA have responded a request for records related to the US’s involvement in the detention of Mexican drug lord Joaquin Guzman with a $1.4 million price tag. The seven-figure sum would need to be paid in full before the DEA would begin processing the request.

Emails obtained through a request to the Charlottesville Police department show University of Virginia president Teresa Sullivan emailed shortly after Rolling Stone’s “A Rape on Campus,”, asking for an investigation into the assault described in the story.

As part of MuckRock’s ongoing Private Prisons project, Freedom of Information Act requests have been submitted to federal agencies for every one of their private facilities. Track them via our interactive map, and if you follow them from their request page, you’ll be updated when as documents come in.

Inspired by an earlier MuckRock article regarding marijuana citation data from California post-decriminalization, Evan Anderson decided to request the same information from several different states to see what comparisons he could draw.

One big takeaway: Florida is decidedly not 420 friendly.