[applause] jessica hello, i am Vice President on the board and the event chair. Welcome to everybody. We are excited and honored to have an illustrious panel of investigative journalists today. This is ethics week at the society of professional journalists, which is the National Version of the Deadline Club, which is the new york chapter. There is a lot going on in freedom of information, it is the 50th anniversary of the freedom of information act. One thing our National Society is proud of and we think is important is our Legal Defense fund just gave a 10,000 grant to a Nonprofit Organization in new orleans which has been consistently not giving over public records on public purchases. That is the kind of battle that is going on. You may know that under the obama administration, while president obama has promised incredible transparency, in fact there have been a Record Number of foia lawsuits under his administration. They have doubled this year from when he first took office. That is something our panel will be speaking about both on the national and local level. And you will be hearing about especially fights with new york city and new york State Government entities that do not want to give over records. You have especially nypd and the department of corrections, which we will be hearing about. It is an honor to introduce our board member of the Deadline Club who put this entire panel together. Where he is an investigative journalist with many awards under his belt with thomson reuters. Take it away. On a note, cspan is here so please use the microphone that will go around. As jessica mentioned, open records are important for journalists, but it is an underutilized tool. It is so difficult to get records out of the government. It can often take months or even years to get records, data, or documents. Pulled the mic closer. Better . T no problem. As i was saying it was a largely underutilized tool because it is so difficult, requested language for months and even years. They often arent in the format you asked for. Something i experienced a few days ago with a federal agency. We are going to talk about specific Horror Stories we all experienced in dealing with certain agencies, but also more general strategies with successfully filing an open records request. It can take time, it can lead to some amazing stories. Let me introduce our panelists going from right to left. We have an Investigative Reporter focusing on data with the new york times. Tom robbins, legendary new york reporter, now Investigative Reporter and residents here and a finalist for Pulitzer Prize investigative reporting last week, so congratulations. [applause] and we have Jessica Hughes men, who is a reporter for the teachers project. Obviously focusing on education. And a lot of fun this last year with the City Department of education, which he will talk about later on. And we have justin elliott, who has done amazing work specifically on spending issues at the red cross, which he will talk about tonight as well. I want to thank the panelists for agreeing to do this, i promise it wont hurt too much. Lets jump right into it. Andy, what is the craziest response you have ever gotten . The craziest response . I have been cursed at, ive had agencies instead of routing my request and treating it like a request for information, immediately giving it in the hands of political operatives to be politically expedient for you to decide whether to release that information was beneficial. So they are not judging whether it is appropriate to release the information. They are deciding on the politics of it. That has been crazy. Right now we have a crazy request going on. It is a state request. And i have learned recently in certain states, if you want to file for public records than we believe that the story we are working on is a national story. In certain states you have to be a citizen of that state. Weve actually had to get a freelance citizen to be our representative while we file this request. Those are three of the more crazy the residency thing is a real problem. That goes beyond the things i assume you were expecting, foia is taking forever getting denied on things that you cant believe you are getting denied on. Getting responses back months later with things redacted that you cant believe were being redacted. I know you have dealt with a lot of new york city issues, im sure you have had some interesting responses. Crazy. A few years ago i tried to get the records of a top official in the giuliani administration. They did not want to give it to me and i understand why. What i was asking for would have been very embarrassing if i got a hold of it. They told me eventually that they were lost, that they had moved their offices and as a result they just couldnt find them anymore. They never responded to that one. It was a change of administrations. Giuliani was out, bloomberg was in. I refiled my original request with the newis time. Some of the same people were still at this agency. They called me and said we are finally sending all this stuff to you. They were sending it from william street downtown. While im sitting there i get this phone call eventually from somebody who says i think i have a box that is addressed to you. They said i dont know why this is coming to us. I said where are you, who are you . I said New Brunswick. New brunswick . Why do you have mine . Fedex dropped it off and we will send it back to you. I said im going to go and get it, im not going to take any chances. I will drive to New Brunswick. He said you dont understand, im in New Brunswick canada. New brunswick, canada. [laughter] and i never understood how that happened. My crack investigative talents failed me when i tried to get fedex to explain how they send this box to canada and sent it to cooper square. I did this story and if we have time later i will tell you about it. You have had interesting responses from the department of education and now you are in court. Why dont you talk about that experience. I requested several data sets in june of last year from the department of education. I kept getting delayed responses. Certainly the tactic of the department of education will send you a letter acknowledging your request. By april 25 they will get it to roll around. May 20 federals around exactly at 5 00 and you get another one. This had continued for months and months and months and finally in november, after i requested these in june i thought this is insane. And i filed an appeal, which was denied. They said we are really busy. I think because of my ignorance of the process i had only been reporting for not very long prior to joining the teacher project for not very long. Prior to joining the teacher project i was a teacher. I thought this just cant be normal, but it is. They said we deal with this all the time, do you want us to sue for you . I said yes. I didnt know this was an option and now i have a lawsuit against the city. It has been really interesting and i just they just keep coming back to the idea that we are just really busy. They have filed dozens of papers from the court. It can be boiled down to, we dont have time to deal with her and she is being annoying, is essentially what they wrote in their brief with the courts that they filed. It is not likely i will get my documents anytime soon. But my lawyers are very excited we are going to have a judicial ruling on whether or not the serial extension letters are in legal. Illegal. Legal are they contend that they are not. I dont understand the citys reasoning for that, but you never know what they will get away with. You had a similar experience even longer with fema that you talked about in a piece last month. I would give you a more amusing one. I did a foia request with the nsa soon after snowden came out. It wasnt for anything topsecret, it was for correspondence emails related to the nsa. There was a puff piece that have been done on the nsa and i got a call from the foia officer saying the nsa didnt have the ability to search through emails. It is literally in charge of sucking up data in most of the internet and plucking terrorists out of terabytes of data and claiming they dont have the ability to search emails for a pretty well narrow and dish for for a pretty narrow and welldefined topic. Why do this . Part of what we do as journalists is get information that we believe is in the public interest, that we believe is illuminating. Every time you do get something not every time. Most of the times when you get it probably does have news value to it. Journalists file some of the least amount as a profession. Corporations do it far more than we do. Journalist, when a is filing, it is because they believe something is there. We tend not to go on fishing expeditions, as a profession. Although, i have seen journalists going fishing expeditions and get some great things. But we do it because we think we are going to be adding something of value to the public discussion. You know, something that will be illuminating and regulatory. There are countless examples of where it has been crucial for doing those kinds of things. Atand in your career, it was dateline, how was that than for your project . Some of the biggest projects i have worked on has hinged on filing open records request. One of the ones you had asked me about before hand had to do with examining ticketing patterns in cities across the country. We used open records request to go to the biggest cities across america that were keeping ticketing data by race, of who is getting different kinds of citations. And what was us down it was, here we were we were in new york and filing requests across the country. We would sometimes be the first journalists ever to request the information. Kansas city or denver, nobody there had ever bothered to even ask, what to the ticketing patterns look like in our city . That is an opportunity for us, as far as the story goes. But it is also saddening. I wouldve hoped, particularly in more vibrant news towns like those, that other journalists would have been like, these are public records. Lets go check this out. It is a frustrating process, thinking it will take months for me to get anything. So, why bother . It is not going to work out and they are going to ask for a lot of money. What are the most common roadblocks you have run into with your requests over the years . They dont give it to you. [laughter] i am reallyquests, glad they are doing that lawsuit. It could be very helpful because that is all across new york. But you know, my when i first moved in terms of trying to the itormation out of agencies, is exactly what any just that. When you do file the freedom of information request, where does it go . It goes to the lawyers, right . Phoney baloneyeir jobs. They take your request and it slows it down right there. Often, it will sit for a long time as they evaluate it. Eventually, he might get something, but they are just driving you crazy. My working assumption is that most of the things i ask for our public records and there is simply no need. I say that as strongly as i can, to every young Public Communications person working for an agency. I say, explain to me why i need to file. If you want me to send you an email that says, under the freedom of information request, i am asking this, just that you can cover your ass, that is f ine. But i dont want to get involved with lawyers if i dont have to. I dont always win, let me be clear. T is an opening gambit but i encourage people to do that because i have been in the business long enough to know r has become a dodge. It is an effective tool to delay and completely avoid altogether, providing information. My interest is to be able to get the info. That is what i really want. I am looking for them to give me the reasoning as to why i need to go through this procedure. And then, if they do put me through the procedure, i am on their back like every single day. We will get to tactics, i guess. How many people have done that, i am just curious . Have people appealed their freedom of information request . The great thing about doing that is it just moves it from one lawyers desk to another. Usually from the Public Access officer who works for the county. But i found that just the fact that you have just rattled the cage that little bit can be effective. So, that is one tactic. It is really important. How many in the room here have filed open records requests . If you dont call her followup, you are never going to get anything. So, one of the things you have to set up for yourself is after you file a request, create a spreadsheet. It dings me when it is time to call somebody and bother them about, where is my information . When i was at the daily news, i spent almost two years calling the same guy every week to get records out of the department of health. And we got to know each other pretty well. He did not always take my call, but he knew why i was calling. We had the same conversation over and over again and after a long time, i got the request. You have to prepare yourself for that kind of effort he could give you quality time, you can jump in front of the line. Other people have filed requests you are not the only one. But if you become a little bit of a nuisance, they are likely to move a little more faster than they would otherwise. But tom is right. If you can get the information without filing a request, that is the way to go. That vortex,are in it takes a long time to get out of it. Jessica, so, what tactics do you use . They could say, it will cost you 10,000 to get that information, which is not uncommon. What do you do . So, i think, the best example i have for this is part of the lawsuit i have filed against the department of education. Forcity has a 311 call line premuch everything. One of the options is for parents of special needs students. There is a number they can call to complain about their students Education Plan not being followed in their school, or mistreatmentof their special treatment child. They try to get the situation resolved. So, i filed for those records to over a two year period, see which schools have the most complaints against them. Which teachers were most problematic. A lot of this information is protected under the federal privacy act. It governs what information can be released about students. I knew from the beginning that it would be heavily redacted. But there are certain things, like the name of the school and name of the Public Employees that cannot be redacted. So, i got a very redacted version of these records, which ended up being like 45 lines on a spreadsheet. And i thought, that is not even possible that you have only received 45 calls in the last two years on this hotline. That is impossible. So, i filed an appeal and in response to the lawsuit they were like, we did not give her a lot of the records because there is no easy way to redact it because the students name is in this massive box of text, where the operator just types and types and it types and types. In order to fully redacted, it will take 60 full Business Days of four people working 40 hours a week. They said, that will come into Something Like 50,000. I said, that is insane. You end up having to do, isecially with students you have to explain to people who are supposed to understand the law. Because the problem is, agencies just redact whatever they feel like redacting and then they stamp it. But they are redacting far too much. It obviously does not require 60 days of full work to a race some names. And they will raise more than they have to. They will contend that this is going to cost you additional money. So, you just have to argue the law with people who are supposed to know is the best. That has been my most effective thing. Also, you should start with the biggest request you can possibly make and then limit it afterwards. You never know what you can get and you can negotiate with them after they tell you no, ford is going to take this long to do it. And you say, what if i just take one year instead of towo years, or instead of all of these categories, i just do two. Jessica, what kind of roadblocks have you run into . . Ost, format, time how do you deal with those when they come up . I will give you an example from my experience a couple years ago. I was beginning some reporting in early 2014 about the american red crossresponse to superstorm sandy. One of the first things i do was thinking, the red cross is a private charity. But one of the first things i did was think about where the red cross might have had interactions with Government Agencies. One of them it turned out was the new York Attorney generals office. They had done a somewhat halfhearted investigation into how money was spent, money raised for sandy relief by charities wazs pspent. They had put out press releases about their findings, but they never put out the raw data. Pen records york [requeso office from the ags that they had gotten from the red cross. Maybe a month or six weeks later, i got a letter in the mail, saying something i had never seen before. It turns out the new york open records law has a provision existing material that has trade secrets. It turns out, the way this works is, if you ask for documents that might contain trade secrets that relate to a certain thirdparty, like an outside company or a nonprofit, the Government Agency will informed the third that you are seeking these records and give them the opportunity to reject on the grounds that it contains trade secrets. The letter i got said that the red cross had in fact, done this. They had hired a law firm that costs 1200 an hour or something. So, when we got this, my editor and i thought, what could the trade secret be if the red cross found some really effective way to respond to disasters and they want to keep it secret from the salvation army, or Something Like that . It may no sense. It made no sense. One of the things we can do that is satisfying and effective is to write about it. That is at the heart of the power we have. Ublic, it is aop website. So, we did a story saying the red cross was fighting this request on trade secret grounds. The story ended up going sort of viral and getting a lot of pick up online. And it is un