In the eerie depths of the Central Intelligence Agency’s declassified archives, a document came rapping, rapping at our browser window. “POEDGR,” the Agency’s computer-themed “The Raven” parody which might be the first poem to have its rhyme scheme thrown off by a FOIA exemption.

Over 150,000 acres were ravaged in Northern California last November, taking with it 86 lives and tens of billions of dollars in property damage. Butte County’s Camp Fire marks the list as one of California’s top 20 largest wildfires in history, leaving massive structural and environmental damages for years to come. With ongoing investigations to determine a culprit, all roads seem to lead to California’s biggest investor-owned utility company, Pacific Gas & Electric - sparking renewed discussion over the necessity of public oversight.

At universities throughout the country, the two big beverage manufacturers, Coca-Cola and Pepsi, contract exclusive rights to stock vending machines and soda fountains with their products, and in September, MuckRock began asking its audience to help us understand just what else ends up in those agreements.

Government investigations into California’s electricity shortage, ultimately determined to be caused by intentional market manipulations and capped retail electricity prices by the now infamous Enron Corporation, resulted in terabytes of information being collected by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. This included several extremely large databases, some of which had nearly 200 million rows of data, including Enron’s bidding and price processes, their trading and risk management systems, emails, audio recordings, and nearly 100,000 additional documents. That information has quietly disappeared, and not even its custodians seem to know why.

MuckRock would not exist without the amazing community of requesters that have helped us grow over the years. If you’ve been impacted by the recent news industry layoffs, we want to help by offering free “Mini Pro” accounts that let you file and embargo your requests, as well as opportunities for free upcoming training.

Recent efforts have shown that even high-tech solutions meant to decrease congestion and increase travel speeds and efficiency require significant planning and funding.

Here’s the latest finds from our ongoing crowdsourced efforts to explore Ronald Reagan’s Federal Bureau of Investigation file and hunt down Director J. Edgar Hoover’s handwritten notes.

Last week, we fixed some API bugs that a user reported. We also set the groundwork to get hacking on our Sunshine Week site; you can help us with that tomorrow on the FOIA Slack or at Code for Boston.

For years, the Central Intelligence Agency was involved in funding and organizing anti-communist movements in Honduras, with deadly results. Files uncovered in the CIA archives illustrate how modern political unrest in the country - including the so-called “migrant caravan” - has its ties directly back to U.S. foreign policy.

In response to our Private Prison Feedback Line, one MuckRock user asked us to take a look at what’s going on with a facility in Basile, Louisiana, and, in response, we’ve filed requests with the town for its previous agreements and payments from private immigration detention giant GEO Group.

Boston’s Great Molasses Flood happened 100 years ago this month. While the cause of the accident turned out to be a faulty tank and warmer than average temperatures, initially reports blamed sinister anarchists intent on violence. A recent Federal Bureau of Investigation report on “Anarchist Extremism” shows just how little things have changed.

The Board of Selectman in Sandwich Massachusetts is under fire this month following an open meeting law complaint filed by Barnstable County Commissioner Ronald Beaty.

The Green Reaper, a Grim Reaper colored green and holding a flower, is the Department of Energy’s National Security Technologies Energy Program’s idea of how to communicate “sustainability goals, successes and best practices,” including “energy awareness and recycling programs,” to the community, and to small children specifically. Why anyone thought this was a good idea is much harder question to answer.

The First Step Act was touted as beginning a reversal of decades of tough-on-crime policies. But just hours after the bill was signed by President Trump, the federal government began a shutdown of “nonessential” government operations. Now more than a month later, the shutdown has stopped efforts by the federal government to meet the new law’s first deadline - the selection of a team who will help implement a tool to assess risk and needs.

A document recently uncovered in the Central Intelligence Agency declassified archives reveals that for over 50 years the CIA kept a translated copy of the Soviet Army’s 1948 “Manual for the cook instructor of the ground troops in peacetime” a closely-guarded secret. That’s how you know that borscht recipe is solid.

For Sunshine Week 2019, we’re working on building a database of the best FOIA suggestions to help showcase the power of transparency - and give requesters a little inspiration when they’re stuck for ideas. Join us next Tuesday in Boston or on our FOIA Slack.

While a not-insignificant percentage of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s activities under Director J. Edgar Hoover were driven by personal vendettas, few were as well-known – or as publicly vicious – as Hoover’s feud with civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. That clash quite literally came to a head on December 1, 1964, when, at the urging of President Lyndon Johnson, Hoover invited King to FBI headquarters for their first - and only - face to face meeting, captured in a ten-page memo in King’s file.

For this week’s FOIA round-up, a new report shows over 40,000 immigration hearings have been cancelled due to the government shutdown, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service pushed to have activists providing migrants with water prosecuted on environmental grounds, and recently released photos reveal that the New York Police Department might be in violation of its guidelines on protest surveillance.

For years, quasi-government agencies have operated under grey areas in oversight and accountability. After a number of reports of embezzlement, financial malpractice, and misuse of funds, state governments have started to keep a closer watch on them.

Citing fears about massive errors and invasions of privacy, 85 organizations sent letters Tuesday imploring Amazon, Google, and Microsoft to end sales of facial recognition technology to government agencies.

Today is the second anniversary of the Central Intelligence Agency’s declassified archives being published online after a lengthy legal battle. While we’ll be examine some of the larger impact the release has had in a little bit, we also wanted to share what’s hands down the weirdest thing we’ve found so far.

While most states have clear guidelines over whether out of state requests can be rejected, others aren’t so clear - in New Jersey, the Open Public Records Act and governing entities often have contrasting views.

Over 100 additional requests related to police departments’ use of automated license plate recognition technology have been submitted to government agencies identified by MuckRock readers as needing further scrutiny.

Does your right to know which companies are receiving your tax dollars outweigh those companies’ rights to competitive secrets? That’s the question at stake in an upcoming Supreme Court case set to be heard in April, and the result could either cement the public’s right to know or severely restrict the ability to track the flow of tax dollars into private companies.

Secretive federal agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are notorious for refusing to confirm or deny the existence of their records. The issue becomes trickier when local law enforcement agencies, tasked with serving their communities, reply to public records requests in similar fashion. The New York Police Department has used the infamous “Glomar response” in the past to keep records secret, but this week a New York court ruled that the NYPD can’t use it this time.