The article does does do a fair job of exploring the nuance of the situation at hand. However, even as someone who is obsessed with privacy, I do think that FOIA is essential and that putting up...
The article does does do a fair job of exploring the nuance of the situation at hand. However, even as someone who is obsessed with privacy, I do think that FOIA is essential and that putting up barriers does more harm than good.
For one, they noted this is difficult to do en-mass. This alone makes me question the usefulness of putting more barriers up.
The more barriers there are, the harder it becomes to request information without it being denied or heavily redacted. This almost certainly be abused to conceal information.
A (probably not great) example: While I consider it a generally good thing for student records to be sealed, doing so means that an investigative journalist can't study for systemic biases in grading.
I think there are two better approaches:
Two-pass FOIA. The first pass has heavily masked datasets protecting large amounts of PII. A second pass can then be requested to unmask it, with more scrutiny and something to the effect of an NDA which sets a much higher bar for public interest. Possibly requiring the second pass requests themselves to be publicly documented with a Name, Email, data requested, and stated reason for unmasking.
Mandating data polices that minimize the collection, distribution , and retention of PII as a whole, such that a FOIA request is much less likely to touch on it. I work for a public institution that does this anyhow to reduce chances of leaks, but processes could be improved. Using the fishing license example: Only active permits have PII stored with them. After the season, most of the data gets wiped. The primaty purpose of fishing/hunting licenses is revenue generation and capping creature death, as such data isn't really needed long term unless there are heavy policies like 'only one every 5 years' or something.
The article does does do a fair job of exploring the nuance of the situation at hand. However, even as someone who is obsessed with privacy, I do think that FOIA is essential and that putting up barriers does more harm than good.
For one, they noted this is difficult to do en-mass. This alone makes me question the usefulness of putting more barriers up.
The more barriers there are, the harder it becomes to request information without it being denied or heavily redacted. This almost certainly be abused to conceal information.
A (probably not great) example: While I consider it a generally good thing for student records to be sealed, doing so means that an investigative journalist can't study for systemic biases in grading.
I think there are two better approaches:
Two-pass FOIA. The first pass has heavily masked datasets protecting large amounts of PII. A second pass can then be requested to unmask it, with more scrutiny and something to the effect of an NDA which sets a much higher bar for public interest. Possibly requiring the second pass requests themselves to be publicly documented with a Name, Email, data requested, and stated reason for unmasking.
Mandating data polices that minimize the collection, distribution , and retention of PII as a whole, such that a FOIA request is much less likely to touch on it. I work for a public institution that does this anyhow to reduce chances of leaks, but processes could be improved. Using the fishing license example: Only active permits have PII stored with them. After the season, most of the data gets wiped. The primaty purpose of fishing/hunting licenses is revenue generation and capping creature death, as such data isn't really needed long term unless there are heavy policies like 'only one every 5 years' or something.