Maybe it’s just a rounding error?
The National Security Archive has done some truth-squadding on the Department of Justice’s proclaimed “94.5% release rate” for Freedom of Information Act requests.
Unredacted’s take: It’s really 56.7%. Herre’s the logic, from the NSA’s Unredacted site:
“But when it reported its ‘94.5 release rate,’ the DOJ did not include the FOIA requests that it denied based on reasons including: fees (pricing requesters out); referrals (passing the request off to another agency while the requester still waits); “no records” (very frequently the result of inadequate searchers by DOJ employees); and reqeusts ”improper for other reasons” (which ostensibly includes the “can neither confirm nor deny” glomar exemption).
When the full eleven reasons for denial are factored in, the Department of Justice’s “release rate” is a much more believable 56.7 percent.”
On Feb. 14, NSA announced DOJ was receiving the “Rosemary Award for worst open government performance over the past year.” It is named after Richard Nixon’s notorious tape-erasing secretary. NSA says the the DOJ put its 94.5% rate on its web site shortly thereafter.
On another DOJ FOIA issues, the ACLU filed a FOIA request in mid-February asking the Justice Department to disclose how often it uses “pen registers” to track private communications, such as e-mail, phone numbers and website IP addresses.