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03/18/2005
Four
million FOIA requests in 2004 tops previous high
By MARTHA MENDOZA
AP National Writer
Americans made
more than 4 million requests to the federal government under
the Freedom of Information Act in 2004, a new high for requests
in a single year, according to a new review by The Associated
Press.
"Four million
requests in a year is pretty impressive, and it shows that
the Freedom of Information Act is a vibrant and important
tool," said Harry Hammitt, who publishes Access Reports,
a newsletter on freedom of information laws.
But because as
many as 80 percent of last year's requests were routine queries
for family, personal or medical records, Hammitt cautioned
that the public should not assume they led to the release
of the historic, political or declassified files people often
associate with FOIA.
Requests last year
increased from 3.26 million in 2003, according to a survey
of reports from more than 70 federal agencies and departments.
Most of the increase was due to the 1.5 million requests received
by the Social Security Administration, which reported twice
as many requests in 2004 than in 2003. Social Security officials
said Wednesday that most of those requests were people seeking
genealogical information.
"The majority
of our requests are for family members who are tracing their
family tree," SSA spokesman Mark Hinkle said.
The Internet has
sparked a national interest in genealogy, and many Web sites
point amateur family historians to the SSA for details about
their relatives names and birth dates.
The Department
of Veterans Affairs, in a continued trend, received the most
requests -- 1.8 million. Most of these involve military medical
and personnel records.
Total requests
have been steadily increasing since 1998 when standardized
record keeping made it possible to figure out such totals.
At the same time, many federal departments have been reducing
the amount of information they release to the public, an AP
review conducted earlier this month found.
"It's a good
thing that citizens are using this law for a variety of useful
purposes, but we're concerned that the administration is not
putting a premium on getting them their answers," said
Celia Wexler, Common Cause's vice president for advocacy.
The Freedom of
Information Act, passed in 1966, requires the government to
release its information to the public, with exceptions for
such things as criminal investigations.
This week marks
the first-ever national "Sunshine Week", a campaign
for government openness spearheaded by journalism groups,
universities, the American Library Association and more than
50 media companies, including the AP.
Most federal departments
said they received tens of thousands of FOIA requests last
year -- the Department of Health and Human Services received
225,006, the Department of Homeland Security received 168,882,
and the Justice Department received 57,346.
The agencies reporting
the fewest requests included the Library of Congress' copyright
office, the Office of Government Ethics and the Federal Retirement
Thrift Investment Board, all of which received fewer than
100 requests.
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On the Net:
Sunshine Week:
http://www.sunshineweek.org/
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AP investigative researcher Randy Herschaft contributed to
this report.
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