Speaker 1: Okay, so you want information about something the government knows. You can actually ask for it.

Speaker 2: It's FOIA. It stands for the Freedom of Information Act. It's a federal law that essentially enables people and the public to get access to government information. So if you have a question for the Department of Justice and you want to know how much money the Attorney General makes, you can send a FOIA request in.

Speaker 3: You can request information from any federal agency, but not the President or Congress. And states have open records laws too, so you can ask, how many city council meetings did the mayor attend? What's in the police report for a crime on my block? Kim Brielle submits open records requests, like, all the time.

Speaker 1: And she's revealed things that the public didn't know about. That reporting has gone into stories that have won the Pulitzer Prize.

Speaker 2: If you have questions, say for instance you knew that a police officer was involved in a shooting, you can get information about that officer, including an investigative report that will detail exactly what happened and how that person was disciplined as well. I love submitting public records requests. I love when I get documents. It's almost like the holidays. And I'm looking for that big package with a rubber band saying it's from some government or police department. Are you guys the nerdiest people here at The Washington Post? Probably the nerdiest people who put words on the page.

Speaker 1: I think Steven might have you in competition, but...

Speaker 4: How many FOIA requests did you file last year? I filed probably around 1,500 open records requests last year, including a little more than a thousand for one project that I was working on. Are you serious? I am. I can FOIA anything. I'm not going to get everything. So I can ask for communications, text messages on a government phone. I can ask for emails. I can ask for... I can ask for Post-it notes that they write on their desks.

Speaker 1: So step one, figure out what you want, which agency has it, and write them a request. There's no special form you have to fill out. You write a letter that you email or, in some cases, fax in, because some government agencies still use fax machines.

Speaker 4: So we're going to send a request today to the FBI. So one of my favorite things to request is the FBI files of celebrities. You can request them on any celebrity that you want, but you're only really going to get them once they die, because you never know what is going to be in their file. Let's make a request then for Carrie Fisher. So we're going to ask for all records kept by the Bureau on Carrie Fisher. So I'm going to put in the FBI's address. We will keep this as the Freedom of Information Act because it is a federal request and not a request to one of the states with their own laws. And then now that it is complete, I can just email this to the FBI and wait. Sometimes I get responses the same day. Like, they'll be like, oh yeah, we have this, here it is. And in some cases, I'm still waiting on things that I requested when I started working here five years ago.

Speaker 1: So when President Obama came into office, he promised that his administration would be one of the most transparent ever.

Speaker 5: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency. And we've put in place higher standards of transparency. This is the most transparent administration in history.

Speaker 4: Was it? Not by any stretch of the imagination. Things went backwards under him, and under Trump, it's only getting worse. The government can deny your request for some legit reasons. So if there is a national security issue surrounding what I'm asking for, I can't get it. If there's personally identifiable information in there, I can't get it. If it's an ongoing law enforcement investigation, I can't get it. And then you can get blocked for some non-legit reasons. One of the exemptions that I always joke about, that I feel like has existed for a while, is the embarrassment exemption. Is they look at these things and they're like, this is going to embarrass us.

Speaker 1: And that's not a legitimate exemption?

Speaker 4: No. They, if there is no exemption and it is super embarrassing, we have the right to have it. And so you see them, the political actors in these offices, figure out ways to not give us these things, or to slow walk us to the point where we'll give up. Another reality are fees.

Speaker 1: You can get charged for photocopies, or the cost of a stamp, or the hour someone has to put in fulfilling your request. Journalists can sometimes get that fee waived. But there are occasions when agencies go in the other direction.

Speaker 4: The biggest roadblocks that I've seen are charging exorbitant fees. Like what's the most you've ever been charged? Like $252,000. $250,000? Yeah. For a database. And did you pay that, Steven? I did not pay that. Okay. Did you fight it? Yes. Did you get the information though? We did, and we ended up paying like $20 for it. A lot of agencies have two tracks for open records requests. One is simple and one is complex. You always want to be on the fast track. To do that, pick up the phone. Find the person who's processing your request, and just help them out. Be nice. Like dating. It's a process. And like dating, if somebody does something to make you angry, do you want to continue to talk to them? No. And so just keep that in mind. At the end of the day, the goal is to get your records.

Speaker 1: But sometimes you do everything right, and you end up with a bunch of this. Oh. So you made a request to the Philadelphia Police Department, and they sent you this? I mean, this is nothing.

Speaker 2: This is what I got. I got a CD full of this. I look, and I'm like, this can't be right. So instead of getting frustrated, I said, let me look at what the document does include. So here's what Kimbrielle did.

Speaker 1: She looked at the number of cases, the names, and the dates, and the documents ended up telling her a story.

Speaker 2: And I found out that there were more than 40 cases in which, in the Philadelphia Police Department, they had rehired these officers after having been fired.

Speaker 1: So to FOIA something, figure out exactly what you're looking for, and then make your request specific so you're not drowning in paperwork or holding up the processing time. Make some calls to help inform what exactly you're asking for, and then follow up. Be courteous, but also advocate for yourself and for the information that you want. Then know the laws so you know your rights. Don't take no for an answer. So go FOIA something, and let me know what you find out. You can find me on Twitter, at LibCasey.