DEA Hands MuckRock a $1.4 Million Estimate For Responsive Documents 136
An anonymous reader writes with news about what might be the largest Freedom of Information Act fee yet. "The EFF recently kicked off a contest for the 'most outrageous response to a Freedom of Information Act request' and we already have a frontrunner for the first inaugural 'Foilie.' MuckRock's loose confederation of FOIA rabblerousers has been hit with a $1.4 million price tag for John Dyer's request for documents related to the 'localization and capture' of Mexican drug lord 'El Chapo.'"
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people voted for obama because he "wasnt bush" , well guess what, he is bush. What next? hillary? another war hawk??? no thanks
Rand paul only seems crazy because he is talking about things others wont. REAL civil rights issues, prison reform, auditing the FED, ensuring our money is sound. I mean yeah, if you go on what we have done for the past 40 years it sounds crazy. but, maybe its time for crazy
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yeah, that no-regulation-free-market-economics-will-save-us-all economic model that he espouses has worked so well....but only for the top 1%, who are concentrating the wealth at a rate not matched since the Gilded Age of the late 19th and early 20th century.
And telling people that the market will decide on civil rights is just stupid. In the hundred years after the Civil War, the market didn't seem to find civil rights a compelling interest, despite the fact that the market pool was arguably smaller due t
Re:Most. Transparent. Administration. Ever. (Score:5, Insightful)
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everyone knows the system is stacked against black people
The system is stacked against poor people.
Re:Most. Transparent. Administration. Ever. (Score:5, Insightful)
yeah, that no-regulation-free-market-economics-will-save-us-all economic model that he espouses has worked so well
FUCK YOU, AC, for perpetuating this asinine straw man bullshit. 87,282 final rules have been issued in the last 20 years. That’s more than 3,500 per year or about nine per day. The 2013 Federal Register contains 79,311 pages, the fourth highest ever. The Federal IRS tax code ALONE is a whopping 73,954 pages, and is so complicated not even IRS tax attorneys can provide consistent answers to tax questions.
But, sure, to you fucking I-love-dictatorial-and-abusive-central-government fucktards defend every ludicrous piece of shit regulation as if ANY rollback is OMG IT IS LIKE ANARCHY IN THE STREETS!
Yea, well fuck you. And the horse you rode in on. And the entourage that rode with you. And the grooms that stabled your horses.
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87,282 final rules have been issued in the last 20 years. Thatâ(TM)s more than 3,500 per year or about nine per day. The 2013 Federal Register contains 79,311 pages, the fourth highest ever.
If companies would stop devising ever more clever ways to mislead, cheat, and defraud while remaining technically within the letter of existing rules, then government might be able to stop revising the rules.
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87,282 final rules have been issued in the last 20 years. Thatâ(TM)s more than 3,500 per year or about nine per day. The 2013 Federal Register contains 79,311 pages, the fourth highest ever.
If companies would stop devising ever more clever ways to mislead, cheat, and defraud while remaining technically within the letter of existing rules, then government might be able to stop revising the rules.
Right. Because we can't hold people responsible for their actions - if one person messes up, we need to make everyone pay. Typical government response.
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get the govt to write simple readable rules to everyone, and the issues would resolve themselves.
Re:Most. Transparent. Administration. Ever. (Score:5, Insightful)
Rand paul only seems crazy because he is talking about things others wont. REAL civil rights issues, prison reform, auditing the FED, ensuring our money is sound. I mean yeah, if you go on what we have done for the past 40 years it sounds crazy. but, maybe its time for crazy
Sorry, he lost me with his stance on vaccinations.
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I dont agree wit him personally on vax, abortion and a few other things, but in the end he is STILL better than the alternatives.
Re:Most. Transparent. Administration. Ever. (Score:5, Insightful)
his stance on the rights of the business owner and the rights of the public is also troubling. the whole snafu with him being a bit ambivalent on the enforcing of desegregation of public businesses during the civil rights era.
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I guess thats your right but you are ignoring the fact that he is the only one who is actually talking about doing anything for civil rights today. not even obama is doing anything for civil rights today.
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it speaks to his mindset if something similar were to come up again.
For example, something that i'm almost entirely sure you would have a conflict with rand paul over.
The rights of the employer to enforce drug policy of their choosing. I'm almost entirely sure that Rand paul would say that a business owner is free to hire and fire whomever he wants. you're free to find employment with someone else after all.
If his stance is so pro-business rights that he's wishy washy over enforced desegregation IN THIS D
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Its already that way now so why would you hold this against him when its how its been for decades in america already???
I think you are buying into the fear instead of actually looking at what he wants to do. Try looking at his page and seeing what he stands for
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I dont personally like the idea, but i think as a business owner, I want employees i wont worry about getting arrested on their way to work when I need them here.
What about drinking? Much more likely that your employees are going to be drinking than doing drugs, so what about mandatory breathalyzer tests? How about Every morning as they walk into the front door? Are you going to do background checks too? Ex-convicts are probably more likely to get re-arrested, don't hire those guys. You shouldn't hire minorities while you are at it, because they are more likely than white people to get pulled over and arrested by the police. That would really ruin your day, if your
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Or you could you know, just hire people that seem dependable and evaluate them on their performance, which seems a whole lot simpler and less judgmental.
and you know what, Rand paul is for that as well. its not an either or thing here.
Plain and simple if I own a business, I should be able to hire anyone I want , for any reason I want. the same goes for firing a person.
I know as an employee it sucks, but if i owned a business, I would not want anyone telling me "oh, you only have X working there? thats no good, you need to hire Y, if you dont hire Y you are racist/sexist etc."
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Or you could you know, just hire people that seem dependable and evaluate them on their performance, which seems a whole lot simpler and less judgmental.
And you know what? That's why it would work just fine without regulation. Because businesses that do that will be much more successful. What you do when you regulation anti-discrimination by law is you eliminate the market penalty for discrimination. I know that sounds backwards, but let me explain. I think it's easy to see what the public would do to a business that tried to discriminate against customers (just look what happened to Paula Deen). But there is a labor market penalty, too.
If you're pass
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the outrage would be there if people discriminated on you for hiring a black person today as well
its not the 50s no more
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:) well apparently we're at the point where we no longer need to screen the south for trying to disenfranchise black people... because you know, we got a black guy in the big seat, and the supreme court says racism is dead. I mean, MLK, that was sooooo long ago.
And obviously the states haven't done anything to make us regret us keeping an eye on them.
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having said that, if a company wants to be that way why work for them to begin with, you have choices on who you work with
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His stance was consistent with his position - that the government should not regulate what the free market can and should take care of.
I'm not defending it.
I'm saying that he has an ideology, and he is consistent.
More importantly, people who agree with him, and later find out just how consistent he is, learn more about themselves than about him.
Abolish the EPA, let black people, or white people, into your business, or not, cause an economic crisis, ignore all manner of shit, and it's all consistent with his
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that the government should not regulate what the free market can and should take care of.
The problem with reducing someone's opinions to this degree is that this is something that most politicians agree on. The disagreements come over how effective the free market is in certain cases and what the regulations should be. From the rest of your post, it sounds like he's on the side that believes the free market will eventually fix everything (in spite of evidence to the contrary). At the opposite extreme are people who believe the free market will not fix anything (in spite of evidence to the co
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we got a merger every other day it seems, that are getting scrutinized for anti-trust implications. i'd say that the free market let loose, ends with monopolies. and the current state of our cable and telecomm could use a good strong dose of good strong regulation reform.
There's a larger issue than vaccination? (Score:2)
I mean, seriously, is there a larger issue than vaccination? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think disease has the potential of killing a lot more Americans than a foreign invasion does even if we cut our defense spending 90%.
We lose between 3k and 60k of people every year to the flu, and the flu is considered a "mild" contagious illness. Imagine if we had polio, measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis, diptheria, tetanus, and that supreme horror of horrors, smallpox, back in full force.
Is there *really* a larg
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The more i look into it, the more i see a manufactured "problem"
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This week, politicians on both sides of the aisle weighed in. Sen. Rand Paul was criticized for saying in an interview, “I’ve heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.” He added that he’d vaccinated his own kids, and said, “I’m not arguing vaccines are a bad idea. I think they’re a good thing. But I think parents should have some input.”
i just dont see the issue. I think parents SHOULD have some input on what is put into their kids bodies, dont you?
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i just dont see the issue. I think parents SHOULD have some input on what is put into their kids bodies, dont you?
A kid has diabetes. But because his parents have recently converted to Christian Science, they insist that PRAYOR!!! will work better than insulin, and if it doesn't it means that God wanted to take the child into his embrace.
Do you let them say no to the insulin?
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if you are diabetic and dont take insulin, you will die. like in hours or days. If you dont get a vax, you might get something, you might not.
apples and oranges
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Do you let them say no to the insulin?
Is it, in the end, the outcomes that really matter? That we should have a government force them to act because the outcome would be better?
The idea of putting governments in charge killed 350 million [hawaii.edu] people in just the last century alone, most of the deaths not being from war but governments killing their own people. Parents of Type I diabetics give their kids insulin > 99.9% of the time - there's not much a regime of forced medication can do in comparison to the d
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Yes, God says that parents should have absolute rights over the lives of their children - it's right there in Deuteronomy or Leviticus or something. I mean, absolute rights over their lives *after* they're born, of course. Before that, if they die it's murder...
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I think he should give details of the many tragic cases he's heard about.
Well that would be morally and legally (because of HIPAA rules) wrong. But you can check out all the statistics [healthdata.gov] yourself.
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Be careful when you advocate mandatory medical procedures. It can be very dangerous. In 1945 there were about 10 vaccinations recommended for children before age 6. Today, when you count all the booster shots, it's about 200. The benefits of flu vaccines is very questionable (they didn't even include the most prevalent strain in this year's vaccine), and with the pace of medical research it will only grow. There is a long list of FDA-approved drugs that have been withdrawn once it was discovered how da
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Measles outbreak is almost entirely tied to either people who just got Vaccinated (read the literature on it, it causes Measles), and people coming in from out of the country (undocumented, illegally). BUT you're too fucking PC to actually acknowledge the problem.
Citation on that literature? I just visited the CDC and 'measles' is not listed as a side effect of the MMR vaccine. [cdc.gov]
And Autism is linked to Vaccinations (See Italy's court rulings),
After seeing Italy's rulings over the Knox case, I trust them less than the US. Besides, plenty of studies over in Europe disproving the Autism thing. You do realize that it was proven that the doctor fabricated his findings in order to further a lawsuit hoping for a payout from the vaccine makers, right?
I've also heard it can't kill true Scotsmen either (Score:2)
What about people without healthy immune systems? Is your immune system healthy, or is the way to check just to see if you die of the flu? Or maybe you get a type that kills you because you have a healthy immune system, like the 1918 pandemic, who knows.
As for the MMR vaccine causing measles, what? Before vaccinations, 90%+ of children contracted measles. Now it's down to a few hundred a year. That's a very strong correlation, but not for your theory.
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Libertarianism starts to fall apart when you realize that government is actually a pretty cool thing. Libertarians are deceiving themselves it they think our world is better run without laws or "government interference". Would you rather actually live in a place where there is complete anarchy? We don't see lines of people at our airports heading to the Sudan.
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explain to me how this is a false equivalence?
If you were standing by your statement of i dont like him because he panders, you would have had no problem admitting that the other side panders to a large group of people as well.
as for childish responses, Im not sure what else to call your non response
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He is rightfully upset that the government would mandate the type of toilet one uses.
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You mean the stance that vaccinations should be voluntary? Which is how they have pretty much always been?
So you are for the position of forcibly strapping people down and injecting them with drugs against their will? Sickening.
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And a number of them were from children born outside of the country, but since it is politically incorrect to actually track that kind of statistic, lets blame ANTI VAXERS!!!!!
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Yeah, well (Score:2)
Yeah, well, freedom isn't free.
[dial snark amplifier back down to 5]
Well, It's Been Said... (Score:2)
...Freedom is not free.
Strat
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Security is not freedom.
Consider the denominator (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to even appear to be defending a government agency, but the request was for over 13K case files. $1.4mln divided by 13K comes to about $107 per case. If a lawyer has to (carefully) review each one — such as to black-out parts affecting privacy of innocent or other government secrets — the requested fee may even appear too small.
As TFA aknowledges:
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i would mod this insightful. props
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Swagging it, 1.4 million implies at least 14 staff attorneys would have to work 12 months.
At the least, I'd like to see a breakout of the labor estimates. It seems double to quadruple what I would expect.
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You think the going rate for a staff attorney is $50/hour ($1.4mil, 14 persons, 2000 hrs/12 mo)? You haven't been around many attorneys, have you? The salary may work out to that (about $100k/yr), but with benefits and overhead, it could easily be double that. Just be lucky that an outside firm doesn
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The HR rule of thumb for most large companies is an employee cost twice what his salary would be. I.E. it would cost the government $200k/year for each $100k/year salaried employee.
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These would be non-litigating government lawyers, who are paid MUCH less than DC BigLaw lawyers. They are probably GS-12 ($76k - 99k), but maybe GS-13 ($91k - $118k).
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A federal government's staff attorney makes $126K [glassdoor.com] per year on average. (Plus bonuses, benefits, office space and supplies, and a manager.) That's about $1.8 million at least, more likely well over $2million.
Now, to be able to go through 13000 cases (each with multiple documents), each member of this hypothetical team will need to process 928 cases. How many can they process per day? To finish in the 12 months allotted
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Possible, but on the optimistic side. As I said, if there is anything wrong with the requested fee, it is too low.
You are clearly confusing the "new" Slashdot's uninformed and not particularly bright libertarian-esque hivemind with things it doesn't like: facts and cogent analysis. May god have mercy on your soul.
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Actually, I find the Libertarian approach to life and government to be the most self-consistent and coherent — with the lowest number of "yes buts", that is.
If you don't mind descending further off-topic, please, explain, what lead you to believe, Maxo-Texas [slashdot.org] is in any way "libertarian-eqsue"?
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Now, maybe, as the AC below suggests, the entire government has to keep all of its documents ready for publishing from the moment they are created (with the necessary black-outs specified by each document's very author or his boss) â" and publish them automatically after certain number of years. But that would require an actual dramatic change in how the government bureaucracy operates â" a change well beyond the ability (perhaps, even imagination) of not only the community organizer we've got, but even of a seasoned CEO, who almost replaced him the last time...
Just to go farther out there 'where no bureaucrat has gone before' so to speak, how about government not collecting and storing so much data of such personal and sensitive nature in the first damned place? Maybe if the government were not involved as deeply and in as many areas as they currently are, this would not be as much of a problem to begin with.
Strat
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Just to go farther out there 'where no bureaucrat has gone before' so to speak, how about government not collecting and storing so much data of such personal and sensitive nature in the first damned place?
Though I agree with you about the government in general, this particular case is about records of criminal prosecution (the "localization and capture" of Mexican drug lord "El Chapo."). Something — one of the very few things, in fact — the government really should be doing.
A Libertarian like myself would point out, the government has no business banning drugs, because a free citizen ought to remain free to kill/harm himself in any fashion he chooses.
But if it does ban them and prosecutes peopl
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The problem with that line of thinking is when the drug user crosses the line into the rights of others like they so often do. When the drug user commits other crimes to get the drugs up to and including killing innocent people.
We have a great experiment in Colorado not just economically but socially. I have seen that the legaliz
War on drugs and human rights (Score:2)
Didn't we have a cool action movie recently denouncing preemptive prosecution? I think, Matt Damon was in it...
When a drug user commits actual crimes, he ought to be prosecuted for them. Denying the right to pursue happiness to free citizens just in case, is totalitarian and evil.
The arguments in Colorado went around cost/benefit anal
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A Libertarian like myself would point out, the government has no business banning drugs, because a free citizen ought to remain free to kill/harm himself in any fashion he chooses.
I'm quite sure that there were numerous reasons to prosecute 'El Chapo' [wikipedia.org] for things other than illegal drug dealing. Browsing the wiki page we have murder, torture, bribery, and everything else you'd expect from a drug cartel leader.
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The point being that there would be no illegal drug cartels if there were no illegal drug markets to exploit. "El Chapo" would be just another petty street hoodlum. The US experiment with Prohibition and the rise & fall of the numerous alcohol-smuggling-related gangs during that period and after would seem to bear this out.
Str
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Now, to be able to go through 13000 cases (each with multiple documents), each member of this hypothetical team will need to process 928 cases. How many can they process per day?
The relevant metric here is number of documents per case. On average, a trained reviewer is going to do about 2 docs a minute, or 120 docs an hour. Keep in mind, that is for a typical privilege review. They may be able to do it even faster if all they are doing is verifying redactions.
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I think your information is good. As I said, I was just swagging it. One follow up question...
Whatever happened to paralegals? I.e. is there no one that any of this work could be farmed out to that is less expensive. I.e. Once the attorney determines references to "Jim Davis" need to be blotted out-- it can be done automatically from there. Once the attorney determines references to personal names should be blotted out- other less expensive government employees could do the work.
Also consider this:
Atto
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If if was quadruple the what you expect then you expect a lawyer to work for $12.50 an hour. That is less than minimum wage in many places. So on average they are charging $107 for each case that needs review. Each case could have hundreds of pages. That seems cheap to me. Maybe the EFF should narrow their request to something more reasonable.
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$100,000 a year is not "$12.50" an hour. I think you need to check your math.
Besides legal clerks and junior goverment attorneys make much less than $100,000 per year.
http://work.chron.com/much-fed... [chron.com]
"Attorneyâ(TM)s Offices ...as of 2012, an assistant U.S. attorney working for the agency in the Eastern district of California was recruited at a pay range of $54,478 to $144,189 per year.
Other Agencies
For attorneys hired under the GS pay scale, those with a law degree received a basic annual salary of $5
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You didn't read what I was replying to.
Here is the math. If $1.4 divided by 14 lawyers would be $100k. The poster does not stop there and makes the following statement;
It seems double to quadruple what I would expect.
If $100,000 is quadruple what he would expect then he expects $100k/4 or $25k per lawyer to be expected. The $25k/year would work out to about $12.50/hr.
You also have no idea how lawyers charge out as they need to cover expenses such as insurance, office expenses, staff, etc. Taxes, and medical/retirement benefits and HR costs can double a ne
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Yes, I assumed it wasn't 14 man years of work for senior government attorneys as part of the swag. Research since then shows plenty of government attorneys making under to well under $100,000 per year.
That said, I think the counterpoints are good and agreed with some of them on some of the other subthreads. It was a swag intended to elicit conversation and analysis- not simple argument.
I still think the swag is highly bloated and an "end run" around the freedom of information act. An update on the "if
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"And if you can't bury them with paperwork, set the price so high they can't afford to request the free information"
The other side of that is "make unreasonable FOIA requests so that when they require reasonable payments publicize it and make the government look bad". I do not believe $1.4/13,000 = $108 per case file is unreasonable. Perhaps instead of asking for 13,000 case files they could narrow their criteria. I think it is funny that when the government does this to someone it is called a fishing expedition but when an organization doe is to the government it is considered valid.
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There are a lot of out of work lawyers out there right now. [forbes.com] Considering that it could employ up to 14 lawyers to just fulfill the FOIA request it could be considered a jobs program but even at $100K/per it's still cheap wages for NOVA. They may have to offshore the work to China and hire about 10 middle managers and a couple of senior lawyers to oversee the project. Then the DEA can put in a funding request for FY2016 to include additional staff to deal with the FOIA request ultimately costing the taxpaye
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Suprisingly, apparently even with a cost of living differential, not so much.
http://work.chron.com/much-fed... [chron.com]
As of 2012...
"For example, new lawyers working in Washington, D.C., earned $62,467 annually, a locality increase of over 24 percent. For candidates with two to three years of experience, the locality increases for the same area amounted to a yearly salary of $89,033."
It's extremely unlikely that the legal documents were personally vetted by even $100 an hour attorneys.
Many attorneys who "bill" $300
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Seems like instead of having to sort through and process everything afterwards, the government should start just releasing everything as it goes, keeping only things that really have to be secret redacted in the first place. Sounds a lot better than a government created problem letting the government off the hook for transparency.
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Seems like instead of having to sort through and process everything afterwards, the government should start just releasing everything as it goes, keeping only things that really have to be secret redacted in the first place. Sounds a lot better than a government created problem letting the government off the hook for transparency.
Only Terrorists* and Child Molesters* want a default-open government!
Why do you support Terrorists* and Child Molesters*?
We have to destroy the Free Market*...err...Freedom*...err...Privacy*...err...Rule of Law*...err...Civil Rights*...err...Transparency*, yeah! Transparency*!...in order to Save* it!
----
*-See the most recent Classified government guidelines for the latest official definitions of these terms.
Strat
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"WE THE PEOPLE" are "the government"... and WE THE PEOPLE want ANSWERS. there are no secrets other than the secret of "the government" betraying their trust to serve "WE THE PEOPLE"... obviously this is what the EFF wants to demonstrate, and what "the government" wants to hide.
blow it all up.
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. If a lawyer has to (carefully) review each one â" such as to black-out parts affecting privacy of innocent or other government secrets
Those documents belong to us, they should be redacted when filed so that we can see them.
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Pretty stupid logic. You're suggesting that the government spend $1.4 million redacting these documents, and hundreds of millions annually redacting all documents that could possibly be requested, in case they are requested, rather than spending the money when someone actually asks for it. You could make a case for arguing the government should be expected to pay the cost of redacting documents that the public are entit
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No, I think the prudent thing to do would be redact the documents and then make them freely available to the public to download. Regardless of whether a request has come in for them.
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They certainly do. And we requested a reasonable fee from somebody, who wanted them.
Yes, I agree with that — and discussed that very idea in a subsequent follow-up [slashdot.org]. Unfortunately, you helped elect the guy, who is the least likely to affect the, dare I say it, change in the federal bureaucracy, that's required to achieve, what you ask for.
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Unfortunately, you helped elect the guy
Who told you that? Or are you just making an ass of yourself in the usual fashion?
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But, but, but... EFF!!!
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I hate to even appear to be defending a government agency, but the request was for over 13K case files. $1.4mln divided by 13K comes to about $107 per case. If a lawyer has to (carefully) review each one — such as to black-out parts affecting privacy of innocent or other government secrets — the requested fee may even appear too small.
As TFA aknowledges:
I'd rather have my tax money being spent on providing information freely upon request than some of the other ways it is being used.
If the government is allowed to charge for information, information is not being provided freely.
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and search using OCR. But these cant be redacted as easily.
There are plenty of systems out there that can perform keyword searches and redact accordingly once the originals have been OCR'd.
FOIA DDOS? (Score:2)
Would it be possible to perpetrate what would effectively be a DDOS attack via the FOIA request mechanism? If the government were required to handle every single request without question, then could an anti-government group send a large number of requests that would waste human, machine, and dollar resources to an extent that was crippling? How should the good intent of the FOIA be balanced against potential misuse?
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It sounds to me like the system is already being DOSed, but from the inside. Locating and capturing one guy produced 13,000 separate case files?
The lesson every government agency will take from this is that each action, investigation, or report, no matter how petty or inconsequential, should somehow involve generating enormous tomes worth of documentation. Attach a reference to the entire United States Code to every case file, for example; some part of it must be pertinent. Then anytime anyone files any FOI
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Considering the request, it's insanely broad. Figure this guy's confiction is on the end of a lot of other cases to narrow him down. He didn't just want court documents but every report, communication, and document leading up to discovering Guzman and his arrest.
I don't doubt that recording ever 'communication', field report, court case of someone down the food chain from Guzman and the like produced that many documents. I'm suprized it wasn't more.
To quote the request: "I request any and all reports,
KickStarter? (Score:1)
That article was - eh - short. I'm not sure I learned anything from it, maybe I'm having a TL;TR day.
But if the requestor really wants 13k documents - let'em crowd fund it and make the case to the public.
I'd be humored to find out if the gov't would even do the work if $1.4m showed up in their bank account. Hah - pay them in cash with amounts under $10,000 to trigger the IRS monitoring of drug crimes.
I realize this isn't really what we're discussing (Score:2)
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13000.... It's not that many documents... it should all fit on a single USB drive.
The government should be required to modernize, not given the ability to charge outrageous fees just to get access to public records.
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Well, duh (Score:2)
Freedom Aint Free!
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