The Electronic Frontier Foundation looks back at the games governments played to avoid transparency.

Have you run into an egregious records denial? Still aching about an agency thwarting the public’s right to know? Just need to vent about the one (FOIA request) that got away? This is your chance to share and commiserate: Submissions are open for nominations to the 2025 Foilies!

Despite our holiday wishlist, every year some government agencies, officials and private companies fight back against the public’s right to know, which is why we are looking for your nominations for the 2024 Foilies, “awards” that highlight intransigence, secrecy and all sorts of other transparency-thwarting.

It seems like these days, everyone is finding classified documents in places they shouldn’t be: their homes, their offices, their storage lockers, their garages, their guitar cases, between the cracks of their couches, under some withered celery in the vegetable drawer … OK, we’re exaggerating—but it is getting ridiculous. Read on for some of the worst of the worst in 2022 transparency stories.

We are now accepting submissions for The Foilies 2023, the annual project to give tongue-in-cheek awards to the officials and institutions that behave badly (or ridiculously) when served with a request for public records.