After months spent occupying McPherson Square, National Park Service police clad in riot gear arrived on February 4 to inspect the occupation and bring it into “compliance” with park regulations. Park Service police began to seize and destroy occupiers’ property. A slow-motion eviction unfolded as a team of Park Service workers wearing hazmat suits moved through the park removing tents. By 6:30 pm, Occupy DC participants had been entirely run out of the park.

FOIA was passed by Congress in 1966 and implemented in 1967, and while it has been amended 3 times since, it remains a strong tool of transparency for the federal government, and one that many states have mimicked by passing similar laws. While the history of how and why this law came into being is a current area of academic research for me, the ability to effectively utilize FOIA to enhance accountability and transparency has become necessary.

Political activists were rightfully outraged when the Bush administration fought tooth-and-nail to keep the minutes of Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force secret. Now, aside from the good people at SACE, who else is working to uncloak an equally secretive–and equally offensive–Obama energy deal?

During the BP oil disaster, the government would generally back up BP’s estimates of flow data, and only changed when they changed. Now we learn from Kate Sheppard that the White House actually leaned on their own scientists to lowball the amount of oil being released from the busted well.

The New York Times sued the Justice Department over their reticence to turn over a memo from the Office of Legal Counsel detailing the argument for how the US government can legally assassinate an American citizen.

Since the news of coordination among mayors and near simultaneous raids on occupations across the country, there’s been speculation about federal coordination and funding. The National Lawyers Guild and others have filed FOIA requests with federal agencies for information about their role in the occupy evictions.

The batch of US State Embassy cables recently published by the media organization WikiLeaks contain a few assessments of how other countries’ governments manage their terrorism watch lists. The assessments reveal much about how countries have tried to implement security regimes for travel in the aftermath of 9/11. And, each assessment is in the form of questionnaire.

As EFF notes, the revelation that the FBI lied on this FOIA response may suggest it has done so in other FOIA suits. And who know? We know Obama’s DOJ submitted several versions of revised declarations in the al-Haramain case in 2009; so it’s possible they were advocating lying to judges in that case, too.

The University of Wisconsin issued two documents in response to the request for Professor Bill Cronon’s emails: a message from the Chancellor, and a letter from the General Counsel to WI’s GOP.

At issue is the process by which top DHS officials review–and are alerted to–sensitive FOIA releases. The policy in place up until July 2010 was put in place in 2006. That is, under Michael Chertoff.