n. (abbr. FOIA)a United States law (5 USC § 552) governing the right to request and access information held by a federal agency, as well as the agency’s legal authority to provide or deny accessBehrnd-Klodt and Wosh 2005, 7Most public legislation, such as the FOIA, the Privacy Act, the USA PATRIOT Act, and open records laws, primarily affect access to government records that are held in agencies and repositories.Behrnd-Klodt and Wosh 2005, 276Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. § 552, In contrast to the federal Privacy Act (described below), FOIA was enacted in 1966 to provide individuals with access not only to their own files, but to provide access to all federal agency records, with certain exemptions.US CGR 2005, 3The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) establishes a presumption that records in the possession of agencies and departments of the executive branch of the U.S. Government are accessible to the people. This was not always the approach to Federal information disclosure policy. Before enactment of the FOIA in 1966, the burden was on the individual to establish a right to examine these government records. There were no statutory guidelines or procedures to help a person seeking information. There were no judicial remedies for those denied access. ¶ With the passage of the FOIA, the burden of proof shifted from the individual to the government. Those seeking information are no longer required to show a need for information. Instead, the “need to know” standard has been replaced by a “right to know” doctrine.US CGR 2005, 6–7The Federal Freedom of Information Act applies to documents held by agencies of the executive branch of the Federal Government. The executive branch includes cabinet departments, military departments, government corporations, government controlled corporations, independent regulatory agencies, and other establishments in the executive branch. ¶ The FOIA does not apply to elected officials of the Federal Government, including the President, Vice President, Senators, and Representatives. The FOIA does not apply to the Federal judiciary. The FOIA does not apply to private companies; persons who receive Federal contracts or grants; private organizations; or State or local governments.Whorley 2005, 115The statutory language of Exemption 6 does not provide guidance on whether the privacy interests protected by FOIA diminish upon the death of the person mentioned in the record. In this case, they privacy interests to be protected by FOIA may depend on the relationships that third parties have with the deceased.Behrnd-Klodt 2008, 156The Freedom of Information Act of 1966 (FOIA) codifies the Bill of Rights’ guarantees that Americans have a right to information about their government. Under FOIA, the first major federal law to mandate and ensure greater access to governmental records, Congress opened all federal records for public access, inspection, and copying, with specific exemptions, to underline the fact that the government’s business is everyone’s business. . . . FOIA requires each federal agency to make information available to any person who makes a proper request.Yaco 2010, 644The federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) allows agencies to make a subjective choice about disclosure of the records of the deceased, “as a general rule, under the Privacy Act, privacy rights are extinguished at death. However, under FOIA, it is entirely appropriate to consider the privacy interests of a decedent’s survivors.”Lawrence 2016, 105Researchers may obtain documents held by the federal government, but not yet released to the National Archives, through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Once released to one person, such documents are essentially considered public, although copies are not necessarily archived for others to use.Slate and Minchew 2016, 11The federal Freedom of Information Act (1966) and the Right to Privacy Act (1974) peripherally benefitted local government archives by promoting the notion of transparency in government.NARA 2018cNARA will deny a FOIA request in whole or in part only when we determine that information may be withheld under one or more of the nine FOIA exemptions, but only if we determine that disclosure would harm an interest protected by such exemption: . . .Oestreicher 2020, 3Perhaps more than any other legislative enactment, FOIA set a national precedent that all citizens have the right to access information, and the implications transcended government archives by affecting access policies at other repositories.
Notes
Many jurisdictions have similar laws, although the names may vary.
