Robot lawyer startup DoNotPay now lets you file FOIA requests – TechCrunch:
DoNotPay, the consumer advice company that started out helping people easily challenge parking tickets, has come a long way since it launched. It's expanded to help consumers cancel memberships, claim compensation for missed flights and even sue companies for small claims. In the early days of the pandemic, the startup helped its users file for unemployment, where many state benefit sites crashed.
Now the so-called "robot lawyer" has a new trick. The startup now lets you request information from U.S. federal and state government agencies under the Freedom of Information Act.
[...] That's where DoNotPay wants to help. The new feature guides you through how to file a request for information, as well as wrangle the fee waivers and option to expedite processing — which is up to you to convince the government department why you should get the information for free and faster than regular FOIA requests. (In reality, the FOIA system is massively under-resourced, and responses can take months or years to get back.) After asking you a series of questions and what you want to request, DoNotPay generates a formal FOIA request letter using your answers and files it to the government agency on your behalf.
DoNotPay's founder and chief executive Joshua Browder said he's hoping the new feature can help consumers "beat bureaucracy."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2020, @03:08PM (4 children)
Fight fire with fire, I guess. But this is a good thing. If we have to hammer on these people to get a response, let's get the biggest hammer we can
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by fustakrakich on Monday December 14 2020, @03:12PM
Oh shit that was me. I'll take credit for that post
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2020, @03:42PM (2 children)
You're also burying the signal in the noise. Unless you can get Congress to appropriate sufficient resources to answer these FOIAs, this is just going to make the problem worse.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday December 14 2020, @04:01PM
Yes, that would be a necessary part of the plan. But, ain't gonna happen, none of it
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday December 15 2020, @08:13PM
If FOIA requests go way up and there's a huge backlog all of a sudden, it will be easier for legislators to justify raising the budget. Right now, anti-transparency people can just claim that there isn't that much demand, even though the difficulty of the process is definitely part of why it's underutilized.
IANAL, and please read my sig.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2020, @04:56PM (4 children)
Why does a FOIA request sound as complicated as the election process...? Just goddam publish all the information that's not classified and stop being douche-holes about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2020, @04:56PM (3 children)
And just goddam count the votes and the one with the most wins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Monday December 14 2020, @07:05PM (2 children)
That would require changing the Constitution, and I'm not really convinced it's a good idea. I think I might be more in favor of going back to the Senators being appointed by the State Legislatures. There were lots of problems with that, but the current system has contributed to eroding the significance of the various states, and that's not a good thing, even if some of them do sometimes seem to have their head in a dark place where they can't see and don't want to smell. Unfortunately(?) that also requires changing the Constitution.
FWIW, I'm generally in favor of power that affects the local citizenry being located as close to that same citizenry as feasible. So I don't like, e.g., states funding school districts. They always do a bad job. I understand that poorer locations tend to get less funding, but that still happens when the state is doing the distribution of funds. I can't specify the reason, but that's observational evidence. And I don't like the school texts where I live being dictated by what Texas wants. I happen to prefer that science be taught, including biology. I'm also in favor of total separation of church and state, including revocation of tax exempt status. If they want to be a charity, they should live by the same rules any other charity does.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2020, @07:31PM
The issue of Texas determining what your kids learn in school has less to do with state or federal governments than it does with the textbook industry. Texas and California are huge schoolbook markets and they are what most of the very few textbook publishers publish to for costs and profit reasons. So actually, it is the benevolent Invisible Hand that is influencing what your children learn, not government.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2020, @09:23PM
I agree with your principles, but on education, the debate is a lot more on state vs. national right now. So, I'm in favor of states running the school districts. Local would be even better, though.