www.montereycountyweekly.com march 16-22, 2023 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY 19 (I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone to Transparency Award: Federal Bureau of Investigation We are all lucky that the FBI is always on the lookout for “left-wing innovations of a political nature,” especially those nasty “subliminal messages.” That’s why, in 1967, it sent an informant to a Monkees concert, who reported on the band’s anti-war sentiment to add to the FBI’s growing file on the band. Micky Dolenz, the band’s sole surviving member, is suing for that file under FOIA. As his complaint points out, the FBI spied on many musicians of that era, including Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon. Dolenz sued after the FBI failed to produce the file beyond the heavily redacted portion that it already published online. The FBI has since provided five more redacted pages, Dolenz’s attorney says. Hopefully, this will shed more light on the FBI’s heroic war against Beatles, Monkees and other subversive members of the animal kingdom. The Outrageous Fee of the Year Award: Rochester Community Schools District This year’s winner for most ludicrous fee assessment takes us to a suburb north of Detroit, where parents were met with a hefty price tag for trying to find out whether the school district was spying on them. As reported by WXYZ, the parents were part of a Facebook group where they discussed their dissatisfaction with the district’s approach to remote learning. After a local parent sued the district, claiming she was fired because a district official had complained to her employer about her criticism of the district’s Covid-19 policies, these parents began filing public records requests to see if the district was monitoring their social media. When one parent asked for records to know whether their name was included in any social media monitoring, the district said that to comply with the request, staff would have to search every email ever sent by an employee—a total of 12,115,251 emails. The district told the parent to be prepared to be liable for a whopping $18,641,345 fee, with $9,320,673.73 due in advance. That’s a lot of bake sales. The Redactions Don’t Gitmo Surreal Award: The U.S. Southern Command The U.S. facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba regularly serves up both insults and injuries. A number of people still held there have been subjected to torture and other inhumane treatment at U.S. “black sites”; many are imprisoned indefinitely; and the Pentagon considers detainees’ artwork to be property of the U.S. government. The whole thing is a bit surreal, but U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) has more techniques for turning up the dial. Bloomberg reporter Jason Leopold submitted a FOIA request in 2017 for artwork created by those detained at Guantanamo Bay. SOUTHCOM finally fulfilled the request last spring, and it took its own creative liberties with the release. To the hundreds of pages of colorful paintings and drawings created by Gitmo prisoners, the military added hundreds of little white redactions. FOIA requires redactions to be very particular and to specifically cite applicable exemptions. It seems there were plenty of very particular elements with which the agency took issue, claiming that amidst trees of leaves and other scenes were materials that were ineligible for release due to personal privacy concerns and the risk that they would betray law enforcement techniques. When prisoners’ art could potentially disclose military secrets, we’re well through the looking glass. “Gitmo, after 20-plus years, is not only a black box of secrecy,” Leopold says, “but it has its own Orwellian rules when it comes to transparency.” We Can Neither Confirm Nor Deny the Existence of This Award: National Security Agency Sometimes agencies will respond to a FOIA request with a stack of documents. Other times, they will reject the request out of hand. But some agencies At left are two examples of artwork produced by inmates at the U.S. facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba that were released in 2022 by the U.S. Southern Command in response to a 2017 FOIA request. The white squares are among hundreds of redactions made by SOUTHCOM, claiming the complete images could not be released publicly. “Gitmo has its own Orwellian rules when it comes to transparency.”
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