That seems.. helpful?

I did a quick check for people submitting things like "FUCK YOU" and "YOUR MOM" in every field and deleted those before sending. A couple I let through had things like missing city but valid ZIP code, which I assume would actually be enough to get the letter to them. 95% of what was sent had a full address.

Did you ever read their instructions for filing a FOIA request? "If you do not include a name and complete postal address, NSA will be unable to respond."[1]

While you are here I dont understand what you mean by:

"It seems that the NSA does not quite get that this is a protest, in addition to a request for information."

How did you expect them to act? And/or what behavior would constitute recognition that this is a "protest"? NSA is required by law to respond to FOIA requests. The civil servant that emailed you was doing what her employer told her to do so that she could continue to bring a paycheck home. Are all the "protest" FOIA requests supposed to get tossed in a burn bag at the end of the day?

[1] http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/foia/submit_foia_request/foia...

> I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same...

Furthermore, the NSA does not get to make "rules" about the form of FOIA requests. If they have enough information to reply, by law, they must reply.

  (3) 
    (A) Except with respect to the records made available under
        paragraphs (1) and (2) of this subsection, and except as provided 
        in subparagraph (E), each agency, upon any request for records which  
        (i)  reasonably describes such records and 
        (ii) is made in accordance with published rules stating the time, 
             place, fees (if any), and procedures to be followed, shall make 
             the records promptly available to any person. [1]

You seem like an intelligent person who is genuinely interested in government. You may enjoy reading the DOJ's procedural requirements for foia[3]. It is an interesting exploration of all of the legal subtleties of FOIA.

I am still interested in hearing what behavior would constitute recognition that this is a "protest"?

[1] http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/552

[2] http://www.justice.gov/oip/foia-guide13/procedural-requireme...

[3] https://www.google.com/search?q=foia+%22complete+address%22+...

Having said that, I think it is rather comical you are using old school snail mail to request the NSA to provide people with their digital records. Plus I'm sure the paper form is a bit more work for someone to process. I like it. I'm all about using inconvenience as a middle finger.

Don't forget; I am still interested in hearing what behavior would constitute recognition that this is a "protest"?

So she was just following orders, huh?

Edit: I attempted to submit a request via the online form, but it responded "An error occurred while processing your request." This makes the paper request seem much more reasonable now.

[1] http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/foia/submit_foia_request/foia...

You can use your argument to anything. E.g. what is your previous comment accomplishing?

I do not mean to be critical of the poster, any involvement is better than none. However I do not think the best path forward is acting as if something is being done when it is not is not.

I think that someone who can build a website like this could make a much more useful one. Instead of preaching to the choir preach to the unconverted (Elected Officials, Mom, Dad, Grocery Clerk). Let people submit address/zip and then return a phone script and the name/numbers of your senators and your representative. Or populate a pdf file with all the information so that someone can put it in an envelope, copy the address given and add a stamp

Sounds more like the ~~company~~ guy is trying to cover for ~~its~~ his fuckup filling out the forms. It's a much more effective protest to actually make the NSA follow through with the requests.

Edit: Also, from http://www.mynsarecords.com/contact/

    To reach Jon, please e-mail: jcorbett [at] fourtentech.com

This man is an idiot, please don't fill up HN with this drivel.

This personal insult is uncalled for. It's easy to sit around and complain about what the government is doing, but this man has actually gone out and done something - setting up infrastructure to make it easier for the average person to submit these requests, he is spreading the word, etc. He has also done great work protesting the TSA.

His infrastructure does not make it easier to submit these requests. It is harder to submit them with his stuff than to use the NSA's own form:

http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/foia/submit_foia_request/foia...

Idiot may have been harsh as a judgement of character, but this post is idiotic.

- Forms were generated via script, so no "fucking up filling out forms" (by me, anyway)

- A few people entered incomplete addresses, but I sent them anyway because I thought the address was sufficient to reach them (for example, missing city but valid ZIP)

- 95% of the forms I sent had full, valid addresses

- The NSA wasn't provided with my Web site, so in order to get the e-mail, they had to stalk that down first

Your blog links to the mynsarecords website.

Took me 2 minutes.

Edit: I'm not as quick as pavs though, it only took him 30s:

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5920564

Turns out, you were being misleading, not them.

I don't get it. What's it achieving?

> Imagine the NSA ending up with a desk full of a million records requests, and what a statement that would make, even if they refuse to process every one of them.

Well, they've got at least 500 so far. Only nine hundred and ninety nine thousand to go.

I wonder how many of those 500 have any records with NSA?

The NSA is capturing all internet and telephone traffic for every individual on this planet with a phone or email account.

But perhaps they don't index it by person name, and so 500 becomes 0 because of that.

Also, the site sending out mail that will just be thrown out because it's not correctly filled out is a complete waste. I just don't see what the goal of this is. Just to spam snail mail? If the goal is to just clog up their office and be a general nuisance as a protest of some sort...at least the forms would not be sent if they don't have all mailing information. Otherwise it looks like really childish trolling. To me that is. You providing a phone number does nothing.

  Courts have recognized that the legislative history of the 1974 FOIA
  amendments indicates that a description of a requested record is
  sufficient if it enables a professional agency employee familiar with
  the subject area to locate the record with a "reasonable amount of
  effort."[105] Courts have also found that requests that are so broad and
  sweeping that they lack specificity are not reasonably described.[106]

  Courts have explained that "[t]he rationale for this rule is that
  FOIA was not intended to reduce government agencies to full-time
  investigators on behalf of requesters,"[107] or to allow requesters
  to conduct "fishing expeditions" through agencyfiles.108 Courts have
  recognized that an agency's FOIA staff is neither required to have
  "clairvoyant capabilities" to discern the requester's needs,[109] nor
  must they spend "countless numbers of personnel hours seeking needles in
  bureaucratic haystacks."[110]
  
  [107] Assassination Archives & Research Ctr. v. CIA, 720 F. Supp. 217,
  219 (D.D.C. 1989), aff'd in pertinent part, No. 89-5414, 1990 WL
  123924 (D.C. Cir. Aug. 13, 1990) (per curiam); accord Nurse v. Sec'y
  of the Air Force, 231 F. Supp. 2d 323, 329 (D.D.C. 2002) (quoting
  Assassination Archives & Research Ctr., 720 F. Supp. at 219); see,
  e.g., Bloeser v. DOJ, 811 F. Supp. 2d 316, 321 (D.D.C. 2011) (reasoning
  that "[b]ecause 'FOIA' was not intended to reduce government agencies
  to full-time investigators on behalf of requesters, . . . [t]o the
  extent that plaintiff can identify documents which he believes exist in
  a particular office within [DOJ], such identifying information should
  have been included as part of his original FOIA request"); Satterlee
  v. IRS, No. 05-3181, 2006 WL 3160963, at *3 (W.D. Mo. Oct. 30, 2006)
  (finding that request was improper where it would require agency to
  "conduct legal research" and answer questions "disguised as . . . FOIA
  request"); Frank v. DOJ, 941 F. Supp. 4, 5 (D.D.C. 1996) (stating that
  agency is not required to "dig out all the information that might
  exist, in whatever form or place it might be found, and to create
  a document that answers plaintiff's questions"); Lamb v. IRS, 871
  F. Supp. 301, 304 (E.D. Mich. 1994) (finding requests outside scope of
  FOIA when they require legal research, are unspecific, or seek answers
  to interrogatories); Trenerry v. Dep't of the Treasury, No. 92-5053,
  1993 WL 26813, at *3 (10th Cir. Feb. 5, 1993) (holding that agency not
  required to provide personal services such as legal research).
  
  
  [108] Immanuel v. Sec'y of the Treasury, No. 94-884, 1995 WL 464141,
  at *1 (D. Md. Apr. 4, 1995), aff'd, 81 F.3d 150 (4th Cir. 1996)
  (unpublished table decision); see also Dale v. IRS, 238 F. Supp. 2d 99,
  104-05 (D.D.C. 2002) (concluding that request seeking "'any and all
  documents . . . that refer or relate in any way'" to requester failed to
  reasonably describe records sought and "amounted to an all-encompassing
  fishing expedition of files at [agency's] offices across the country, at
  taxpayer expense").

Probably all of them, since the NSA collects phone records on every American.

If I have your name, which is: Jonathan Corbett.

I google searched "Jonathan Corbett NSA"

The first link is your twitter account: https://twitter.com/tsaoutourpants

Which mentions: http://www.mynsarecords.com/

I do a whois on the site: (public information)

      Corbett, Jonathan  [email protected]
      FourTen Technologies, Inc.
      407 Lincoln Road
      11th Floor
      Miami Beach, Florida 33139
      United States
      8774100410

Not very difficult really.

Guess not.