We’re releasing thousands of pages of police misconduct records in New York. Let’s open up more nationwide

There are still plenty of requests you can file before Inauguration Day.

The state doesn’t publicize officer employment histories, making it impossible to track so-called wandering officers.

The police chief in Orange County’s Village of Chester claimed his department had no misconduct records. He was hiding an investigation into his own alleged malfeasance.

In almost every FOIA policy discussion these days, the topic of AI comes up. What we are already seeing should be concerning to those who want broad access to the public’s information.

Last November, Reuters published an extensive report — backed by interviews, internal communications and public documents — on Appin, an Indian cybersecurity training firm. A month later, an Indian court ruled in favor of a plaintiff for a preliminary injunction that claimed the article defamed not just the company in question, but was “derogatory to the entire Indian nation.”

The committee, established to hear testimony on the issue and recommend legislation, will meet Oct. 15.

Lisa Rowan of Cardinal News leveraged DocumentCloud’s Regex Extractor and Azure Table Extractor to investigate a school board’s unusual lawsuit against a parent. By analyzing financial documents, she revealed the hidden costs associated with the case. This Add-On case study demonstrates how data extraction tools can streamline reporting, enabling journalists to efficiently navigate large sets of financial information and enhance their investigative work.

For the Society of Environmental Journalists freelance tips newsletter, MuckRock’s Dillon Bergin offers a step-by-step guide to filing document requests, organizing and analyzing your documents and joining the FOIA community.

We’ll be releasing the experience for everyone in mid-November. Keep reading for an in-depth explanation for why we started this project, how we approached it, and how it succeeded.

Since at least 2023, the Attorney General has asked the federal government how it uses machine learning for public records. We want to know more.

MuckRock’s September FOIA Friday conversation focused on opening up the statehouse through requesting data and documents such as calendars, contracts, lobbying data and travel logs.

New changes have been made to both the DocumentCloud and MuckRock APIs, including that and embargoes are now restructured.

The Data Liberation Project transparency initiative is joining MuckRock, where together with the data experts at Big Local News it will expand how the community of FOIA enthusiasts requests, documents and publishes data.

Public records are a cornerstone of government transparency and accountability.

Reporters for both organizations were present at the awards ceremony at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

DocumentCloud, supported by the Filecoin Foundation, is using the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) network and Filecoin to ensure long-term preservation and distribution of documents. IPFS’s decentralized nature enhances censorship resistance and privacy, while Filecoin provides incentives for data storage and sharing. DocumentCloud’s Push to IPFS Add-On facilitates easy integration with IPFS/Filecoin for secure and enduring document access.

August’s FOIA Friday session covered documents that are especially useful during the election season: personal financial disclosures, business interests and finances.

DocumentCloud has consolidated its documentation to include detailed guidance on customizing embeds and using the API to call Add-Ons. The MuckRock API received an update that allows you to add or remove collaborators from a FOIA request and to sort requests by datetime. The Legal Citations Add-On also now provides page numbers for citations found in each document.

DocumentCloud’s recent review provides a detailed comparison of available tools, highlighting their strengths and limitations in handling diverse data extraction tasks.

Admiral Grace Hopper was a pioneering figure in early computing, developing the first compiler and architecting early compiled programming languages. Now, after a FOIA request and technical assistance from the National Archives, the National Security Agency has released her 1982 lecture, “Future Possibilities: Data, Hardware, Software, and People.”

MuckRock Senior Developer Chris Amico led a hands-on session on self-hosted maps at SRCCON 2024.

Take advantage of new resources to help your election reporting.

This FOIA Bill of Rights can be used as a guide by both agencies and requesters and can be included into the FOIA guidance provided by the Department of Justice to agencies, and its provisions and protections even added to the FOIA statute.

The MuckRock team is excited to introduce several new features in our transparency toolkit. Users can now easily search across all public projects, making it simpler to find relevant collections of documents.