For 18 years, the federal government had a centralized, internal FOI database of request summaries. It was quietly killed in 2008, and its contents deleted because the data was considered 'transitory.'
Remembering CAIRS: secretcanada.com/news/cairs-foi… #cdnfoi #cdnpoli #SecretCanada

Bit late to this, but beyond honoured that Secret Canada was recognized by IRE and NICAR with the FOI Award and IRE Medal!
The judges called it 'one of the most ambitious public records projects ever published.' 🥹
ire.org/announcing-the… #cdnfoi #SecretCanada

New #SecretCanada post: Save yourself a piggyback! The Investigative Journalism Foundation has launched an incredible new database — Open By Default — that contains more than a decade of previously released federal ATIP records. secretcanada.com/news/ijf-foi-d…

I'm so excited our Open By Default database is now live!

It includes 20,000 ATIPs and 2.6 million pages filled with all kinds of fascinating government secrets!

All the documents are free, searchable and downloadable. Check it out! #cdnfoi #cdnatip

theijf.org/open-by-default

Our latest #SecretCanada blog post digs into federal piggyback requests, which have surged by 59 per cent (!!!) year-over-year.
secretcanada.com/news/federal-a…
#cdnpoli #cdnfoi

Further to that Supreme Court mandate letter decision, last week I sat down with Justin Safayeni 🇺🇦, the CBC's lawyer, to chat about the ruling. We talk about all sorts of fun stuff: Constitutional conventions! Standards of review! #cdnfoi #cdnpoli #SecretCanada secretcanada.com/news/supreme-c…

New post up on SecretCanada.com, where I look at the latest federal access to information statistics, make some spreadsheets and get angry about them. #cdnfoi #cdnati #cdnpoli #SecretCanada
secretcanada.com/news/federal-a…

New Secret Canada blog post is up! Vexatious, or tenacious? What to know about “vexatious” FOI requester provisions secretcanada.com/news/foi-laws-… #cdnfoi

Big FOI Supreme Court decision dropping Friday 👀

Spoken word: Behind the scenes with @cvandusennews and Mike Ross, the news-readers for @amiaudio bringing the The Globe and Mail's headlines to people who are blind or partially sighted theglobeandmail.com/canada/article…

You rarely see the direct consequences of government secrecy and nondisclosure.
If the police had released body cam video of Derek Chauvin putting his knee to a teen’s neck in 2017, he’d have been fired and never would have murdered George Floyd in 2020.
propublica.org/article/how-po…

Ottawa told me earlier this year that almost all of Accenture's work administering the Canada Emergency Business Account (CEBA) program was done in Canada.

It turns out a 'critical' part of the $208-million contract is done by subsidiaries in Brazil.

theglobeandmail.com/business/artic…

Must-read thread (and story!) on how the NYPD mostly refuse to release body-worn camera footage, despite vowing to do so.
Back in February Robyn Doolittle and I wrote about this in the Canadian context, where, in practice, footage is never released at all:
theglobeandmail.com/canada/article…

Three years ago, I got some footage that I couldn’t get out of my mind.

It showed the first police killing captured on body-worn cameras in NY.

The NYPD didn’t want anyone to see it.

It eventually launched me on the biggest story I’ve ever done, w/ NYT Magazine

[THREAD]

Our latest from #SecretCanada : New Brunswick’s access regime among the most restrictive in Canada. “The legislation seems to be built around protecting information as opposed to promoting access,” provincial Ombud Marie-France Pelletier. theglobeandmail.com/canada/article…

Wrote a thing for OpenNews Source explaining why Robyn Doolittle and I decided to investigate Canada’s FOI regime, and on how you can jumpstart your own public service FOI project a la secretcanada.com