Behind the Blog: Amplification and Heavy Breathing

This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss weirdness in the FOIA world, the idea of "amplification," and breathing heavily.

JOSEPH: Something weird is going on in the world of FOIA. For years, I’ve been asking U.S. government agencies for specific procurement documents, especially statements of work. These are essentially the bit of a contract that says ‘this is why we are buying this technology’, and they can provide important insight into what surveillance or other capabilities the government is investing in.

Here’s what I often request: invoices, purchase orders, unsolicited proposals, and statements of work related to a particular contract ID that I’ve dug up from U.S. government purchasing databases. This is a spread of specific types of documents that an agency will likely hold if they paid for a certain product or service. For years I’ve made near identical requests to the DEA, the FBI, CBP, ICE, the Air Force, the Army, the Navy, and more with great success. The success, I think, is from the very specific language.

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