The Department of Energy said it will close FOIA requests from last year unless the requester emails the agency to say they are still interested. Experts say... [More inside] (archive.ph)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by InevitableSwing@hexbear.net to c/news@hexbear.net

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Experts say it's an "attempt to close out as many FOIA requests as possible."

[...]

The Department of Energy (DOE) said in a public notice scheduled to be published Thursday that it will throw out all Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests sent to the agency before October 1, 2024 unless the requester proactively emails the agency to tell it they are still interested in the documents they requested. This will result in the improper closure of likely thousands of FOIA requests if not more; government transparency experts told 404 Media that the move is “insane,” “ludicrous,” a “Pandora’s Box,” and “an underhanded attempt to close out as many FOIA requests as possible.”

[...]

FOIA requests—especially complicated ones—can often take months or years to process. I have outstanding FOIA requests with numerous federal agencies that I filed years ago, and am still interested in getting back, and I have gotten useful documents from federal agencies after years of waiting. The notion that large numbers of people who filed FOIA requests as recently as September 2024, which is less than a year ago, are suddenly uninterested in getting the documents they requested is absurd and should be seen as an attack on public transparency, experts told 404 Media. The DOE’s own reports show that it often does not respond to FOIA requests within a year, and, of course, a backlog exists in part because agencies are not terribly responsive to FOIA.

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[-] Cat_Daddy@hexbear.net 5 points 1 day ago

Oh, good, the hexbear foia request should go away, then

this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2025

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