Public agencies’ annual Halloween candy notices are prevalent across social media and news publications. Marijuana candy, in particular, increasingly dominates fearful headlines ahead of the holiday as more states legalize recreational use of the drug.

While the 2016 Massachusetts public records overhaul did successfully reform several aspects of the state’s records law, it didn’t address some of the biggest hurdles facing requesters — most importantly, a lack of enforcement.

Whether you’re a first-time reader or frequent MuckRock filer, we want to hear from you about how we can make our news, resource, and service more useful. Take the 2018 MuckRock Survey to share your thoughts — and you’ll get a chance to win some free swag or a gift certificate!

In the late ‘50s, a former Army Intelligence chief alleged to the Federal Bureau of Investigation that a secret cabal of socialists and Communists were infiltrating the government. The 122 named individuals included some senior officials and even hardline anti-communists such as Central Intelligence Agency spymaster James Angleton. Though the FBI ultimately dismissed the accusations as the result of an interagency feud, the Bureau did did congratulate itself on having already been aware of most of the individuals’ alleged subversive tendencies, which included sometimes having thoughts similar to those of socialists.

In a goal to arm requesters with knowledge, we’re launching a new project page hosting state-by-state public record law stories and key players fighting for transparency in those states.

Using the Assignment crowdsourcing tool, MuckRock is kicking off a project to catalog all of the handwritten notes left by Hoover himself in the Bureau’s files.

Crisis training scenarios using volunteers dressed as zombies make make for incredible FOIA fodder.

Last week we pushed a number of changes, from making it easier to crowdsource your FOIA finds to reducing the amount of follow ups in many jurisdictions. Plus, we have an opportunity to turn your chatbot dreams into reality.

In this week’s FOIA round-up, emails show correspondence between Amazon and Immigration and Customs Enforcement representatives regarding the tech giant’s facial recognition software, public and confidential data from Chicago revealed a decade of sexual abuse of students throughout public schools, and a significant amount of National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s historical artifacts have gone missing or been taken in the agency’s lifetime, highlighting flawed storage and tracking procedures.

With 50 different public records laws across the nation and varying opinions on what works, requesters continue to find themselves in a loop to grasp different guidelines. Yet, a former access officer turned transparency lawyer says one unified public records law could be relief requesters need.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation explored hundreds of leads over the course of its 45-year investigation into the infamous D.B. Cooper skyjacking case. Even after the Bureau closed the Cooper case in 2016, devoted independent sleuths to the case have pursued and released new theories.

At both the federal and state level, requesters filing for similar documents may encounter additional barriers in the form of so called “vexatious requester” laws.

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts occupies that most treasured space where public opinion can be excavated through public records requests. As a state agency, the museum’s budget documents, meeting minutes, and complaints from visitors about its art are at our oily fingertips.

While Brazilian presidential front-runner Jair Bolsonaro’s overt embrace of authoritarianism may seem aberrant to many foreign observers, it differs only in degree from decades of United States influence in Latin America. Declassified Central Intelligence Agency and State Department records from the midst of the Brazilian military dictatorship reveal an official US policy of support for the very brutality Bolsonaro intends to revive.

A presentation from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Records Management Division uncovered by Paul Galante as part of our Ronald Reagan FBI file crowdsource outline the process used by FOIA officers to search for records.

Accuracy In Media isn’t an organization that MuckRock is particularly fond of, but its Federal Bureau of Investigation file is full of some of our favorite things: debates over what an FBI file actually says and complaints about FOIA denials.

FOIA law governs access to public records at the Federal level, but each state mandates their own public records policies. Navigating the ambiguities in these state laws can prove cumbersome and frustrating to requesters - we’ve identified particularly irksome examples, and offer tips on what you can do about them.

Since the 2016 general election, Florida-based for-profit prison operator GEO Group has donated over a million dollars to Political Action Committees and political candidates throughout the State of Florida, support Republican PACs and gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis, as well as a number of elections for representation in both houses of the Florida Congress.

Back in 2010, in an effort to keep the local black bear population down, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie reinstated the state’s annual bear hunting season. Despite record numbers the first year, the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife noticed a massive drop-off in the seasons that followed. So to bolster the argument that hunting was the most effective means of population control, in 2014 they decided upon a rather novel way of encouraging people to shoot more bears: state-issued cookbooks.

In this week’s FOIA round-up, public records show massive federal spending on protecting Confederate cemeteries post-Charlottesville, the Trump administration’s policy of withholding documents requested with FOIA at the Fish and Wildlife Service, and a police fraternity allowing cops to escape DUI charges in Illinois. Also, an extensive FOIA-focused report details systemic flaws in the Illinois state FOIA process.

Last week, MuckRock asked for your help going extracting names and affiliations from Central Intelligence Agency’s list of official contacts and liaisons with other government agencies. Since then, MuckRock users have combed through half the list, producing names, affiliations and other leads. The response has been strong enough that we’re launching a new project for the effort.

When we last wrote about the Federal Bureau of Investigation file for former head of the American Civil Liberties Union Roger Baldwin, we looked at one of many instances in which Baldwin butted up against Director J. Edgar Hoover on the issue of balancing liberty and security. An earlier section of the file, however, reveals their relationship was relatively tame compared to that of Hoover’s predecessor, who once urged radio stations not to let the “ultra-radicals” at the ACLU broadcast the “rotten propaganda” that they weren’t on the Soviet payroll.

Most requesters that file in Massachusetts have noted difficulty in obtaining records from the state. The Bay State has often been ranked as one of the worst in terms public access to information, and that’s in no small part owing to the fact that three branches of government - the judiciary, the legislature, and the office of the governor - are exempt from the public records law.

There are over 3,000 Sheriffs’ departments in the United States, and nearly a tenth of them have provided contracts to MuckRock in response to our nationwide survey of inmate prison phone agreements.

An improved public records law was passed on Beacon Hill two years ago, but just five miles away, the Medford Police Department continues to neglect its legal obligations to records requesters and the public.