Freedom of Information Act of 1966 (FOIA)

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a law intended to give citizens and organizations access to government information with minimal restrictions and hindrance. The original act was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on July 4, 1967. It was subsequently amended to specifically include in its scope all electronically stored and transmitted information, which resulted in the Electronic Freedom of Information Act (EFOIA), signed by President Bill Clinton on October 2, 1996. The law provides a process for requesting government information, a timeline for government response, and judicial channels for forcing government compliance.

The FOIA and EFOIA laws are meant to ensure a citizen's “right to know.” While usually framed in the [Page 945]context of national security, the FOIA has been valuable in accessing information as diverse as consumer product safety data, workplace condition reports, government-business contracting practices, environmental data, and public policy implementation and effectiveness.

In theory, democracy works best with an informed citizenry; governments are believed to best respond to the interests of their citizens when their actions are open to public scrutiny. However, in the wake of World War II and through the beginnings of the Red Scare and the Cold War, the U.S. government showed a greater reluctance to share information with the public, either directly or through news and educational organizations. Eventually, the Department of Defense adopted a policy of only releasing information that would directly contribute to its national security efforts, institutionalizing a governmental “right to withhold” and creating de facto censorship of the news media. Pressure from news organizations and growing concerns in Congress resulted in a series of congressional hearings through the 1950s and early 1960s and eventually led to the passage of the FOIA in 1966.

The cornerstone of the FOIA is its bias toward public access to government information and away from a governmental right to withhold. The law requires that the government release information unless it can prove that it should not make the requested information public rather than force the public to prove that the information is needed. Just as critically, the law also attempts to specify what constitutes “secret” information, putting in place some boundaries to the government's ability to withhold information on the basis of national security concerns.

Although the FOIA most often is applied to government information, this can also include information about individual businesses or entire industries provided to the government by lobbyists, industry associations, and the businesses themselves. Through both routine interactions (e.g., regulatory reporting, permit applications, responses to RFPs) and other more specialized activities (e.g., lobbying efforts, task force participation, informal discussion with government officials, congressional fact-finding efforts), information that businesses provide to the government in many cases becomes subject to discovery through FOIA requests. Information that businesses would prefer remain closely held may eventually become public in this way.

The law has proven to be effective in improving the flow of information between the government and the public, but it has not eliminated all problems. While the law sets a time period in which the government must respond to requests, agencies often fail to meet those requirements, either due to the volume of requests received or through intentional delays. Forcing government agencies into court over delays is costly and time-consuming, so many requests either expire due to government or public neglect or are litigated indefinitely. Especially in requests involving the FBI and CIA, requests from as far back as the 1980s and 1990s are yet to be handled, and as backlogs on all agencies grow, delay has become an effective tool for the government to withhold information.

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