There are FOIA statutes that require federal, state and local governments to release documents and other data in the public interest in a reasonable amount of time. In this case, the statute gives the FBI 14 days. Limiting the release of documents to 500 per month to make the process take 66 years start to finish (IMO) is a violation of this statute. And there are tools the government has to automatically scrub documents of potentially sensitive information and these tools can run at a clip far higher than 500 documents a month. And so far, this district judge appears to agree.
If I could find any other publication covering this court case I would have provided the link.
Similarly, the FDA has asked a court for 55 years to respond to a FOIA request for COVID vaccine data. Assume you won't object to this source. [0]
Look I'm all for massively boosting FOIA funding across the government to improve FOIA compliance. Note that that is not what the Epoch Times is trying to advocate with their deceptive headline here. I'm annoyed when "news" sources - especially ones that are deeply connected to cults - borderline lie in their headlines to get people riled up.
The FBI has an annual budget of $9.7-billion. How much more do you think they need to use tools they already have to scrub a hard drive image of sensitive information and send the rest to this FOIA requester on a thumb drive? FOIA allows the government to set a reasonable price for the labor and equipment involved in processing such a request, but that doesn't appear to be the sticking point here.
State and federal governments arguing "it's really hard and expensive so you shouldn't make us do it" is the default response to pretty much any FOIA request. This instance isn't special.
How large were the documents you requested that needed review? Was it the first time they were being reviewed?
Edit: also, I haven't looked further into this but can almost guarantee you that the FBI was trying to work with the requester to narrow down what they're requesting to something that is slightly more focused than hundreds of thousands of pages that all need review first
If I could find any other publication covering this court case I would have provided the link.
Similarly, the FDA has asked a court for 55 years to respond to a FOIA request for COVID vaccine data. Assume you won't object to this source. [0]
[0]: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/wait-what-fda-wants...