The Pantagraph: Illinois law, 200 years ago: Inside the quest to digitize state’s legal history. “A committee charged with preserving historic Illinois Supreme Court documents has received a $135,000 grant from the National Archives to digitize court records dating from the state’s infancy through the end of the Civil War.”
Richmond Times-Dispatch: Opinion: Casting shade on Virginia’s ‘Sunshine Law’. “What was once the domain of overreaching politicians and campaign-season hyperbole, the idea that U.S. democracy is under attack means something different in 2023. Meanwhile, perhaps our best tool for combating propaganda and misinformation — the Freedom of Information Act — continues to get treated in the Virginia General Assembly like a bureaucratic nuisance.”
Federal News Network: FOIA backlogs on the rise after record number of requests . “Freedom of Information Act backlogs soared at some key agencies after the public filed a record number of FOIA requests in fiscal 2022. Agencies received 928,353 requests last year and processed 878,420 requests, both record highs, according to the Justice Department’s Office of Information Policy. Agencies were required to upload their fiscal 2022 annual FOIA reports by March 1.”
Federal News Network: The government’s secrets apparatus could collapse under its own weight. “Former President Donald Trump, former vice president Mike Pence, and President Joe Biden don’t have much in common. But all three got caught with classified documents that they took home. The incidents show a lot of things, including how cumbersome the classification system is. The Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with someone who spends a lot explaining this challenging issue: Yale law professor Oona Hathaway.”
Honolulu Civil Beat: The Military’s Public Information Black Hole. “Since I started reporting in Hawaii in 2019, I’ve filed numerous FOIA requests with the military, primarily the Navy. Time and again, I have filed one with the hopes of shining a light on an issue of public importance only to have it fizzle into nothingness. The Freedom of Information Act, which is supposed to provide the transparency needed for a healthy democracy, is too often a pathway to a dead end that leaves us in the dark on critical issues. “
The Distant Librarian: Jeremy Singer-Vine’s Data Liberation Project. “Not to be confused with Canada’s Data Liberation Initiative, Jeremy Singer-Vine is spending his time on the Data Liberation Project, ‘an initiative to identify, obtain, reformat, clean, document, publish, and disseminate government datasets of public interest.’ There’s not yet a lot to look at there, but there’s plenty in the pipeline.”
Washington Post: Archives weighs asking past presidents, VPs to look for classified items . “The National Archives is weighing whether to ask living former presidents and vice presidents to review their personal records to verify that no classified materials are inadvertently outstanding, according to two people familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail private conversations.”
Newswise: “Flexible electronics” may one day secure classified documents. “Both President Biden and former President Trump have had issues with having classified government documents in their possession that they were not supposed to have. But there may soon be a relatively simple way to prevent situations like this, according to Paul Berger, professor of electrical and computer engineering at The Ohio State University. Flexible electronics enables the production of thin, flexible stickers, like the radio frequency identification tags one finds on some items in stores to prevent shoplifting.”
Associated Press: Classified records pose conundrum stretching back to Carter. “It turns out former officials from all levels of government discover they are in possession of classified material and turn them over to the authorities at least several times a year, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of classified documents.”
Daily Beast: Way Too Many Government Documents Are Classified. “One of the reasons so many officials have feared the circumstance in which Biden now finds himself is because so many encounter classified documents in their day-to-day work. Classifying so many documents makes the likelihood of errors higher. But it also makes it harder to share or find information necessary to policymakers…. Experts have sounded the alarm about this problem for decades, and every few years there is even a call to fix it—but it never happens.”
Central Tibetan Administration: CTA to Soon Begin Records Digitisation Project. “The Department of Religion and Culture, CTA, held a preliminary meeting on Digital Library Initiative today presided over by Sikyong Penpa Tsering, the incumbent Kalon of the department. Sikyong underlined the necessity of digitally archiving the prolonged preservation of important and invaluable paper-based documents of bygone ages and tabled the proposition of collaborating with major libraries in India, Nepal and Bhutan for the conservation of documents.”
UVA Today: Details, But No Big Revelations in Latest Kennedy Assassination Documents. “In December, the National Archives released 13,173 documents containing details on the shooting under terms of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. UVA Today spoke with Steve Gillon, a non-resident senior faculty fellow at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs, which studies the U.S. presidency, to see if this document dump shed any new light on the assassination.”
CNN: National Archives releases thousands of JFK assassination documents. “The National Archives on Thursday released thousands of previously classified documents collected as part of the government review into the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The cache of over 13,000 documents is the second of two JFK assassination-related document dumps that President Joe Biden ordered last year when the White House postponed a public release because of the Covid-19 pandemic.”
National Security Archive: The Cuban Missile Crisis @ 60 POSTMORTEMS. “… the National Security Archive is posting a final collection of postmortem documents, concluding its series on the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In addition to the summary of the Khrushchev-Novotný meeting, the selection includes correspondence from Khrushchev to Castro, Castro’s own lengthy reflections on the missile crisis, a perceptive aftermath report from the British Ambassador to Havana, and a lengthy analysis by the U.S. Defense Department on ‘Some Lessons from Cuba.’”
Washington Post: House committee asks National Archives to review Trump storage unit. “The House Oversight Committee sent a letter to the National Archives on Tuesday requesting a review to determine whether former president Donald Trump has retained any additional presidential records at his storage facility in Florida.”
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