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Re:NSA: Please Stop Mailing Us FOIA Requests by tsaoutourpants on Friday June 21, 2013 @05:44PM (#5921207)
In order for a record to be releasable under FOIA, it need not be in a file attached to your name. If I ask the NSA for every document that has the word "purple" in it, they are required to provide that document or claim a valid statutory exemption. Likewise, if I ask them for any record that contains 8005551212, they are required to provide it regardless of the labeling on its container.
Re:NSA: Please Stop Mailing Us FOIA Requests by dfc on Friday June 21, 2013 @06:16PM (#5921348)
It is now clear that you have not done any research about what constitutes a valid FOIA request. If you would like to do some research the DOJ Procedures guide that I have previously recommended is extremely detailed and thorough. I was serious when I said you might enjoy reading it if you are interested in FOIA. Please note, I have only included footnotes 107 and 108 because they seem to be the most relevant to this comment.

  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").