The FBI is using antiquated computer systems on purpose, according to a new lawsuit, in an effort to foil requests made under the Freedom of Information Act.
The lawsuit, filed by national security researcher and MIT Ph.D. candidate, Ryan Shapiro alleges the FBI is using an antiquated system that searches in the "universal index" of its legacy Automated Case Support (ACS) system rather than two modern search applications the FBI has access to - a move he argues leads to "failure by design" and an inability to turn over requested documents due to the system's inability to find them.
"When it comes to FOIA, the FBI is simply not operating in good faith," Shapiro said. "Since the passage of the Freedom of Information Act, the FBI has viewed efforts to force bureau compliance with FOIA as a security threat."
Shapiro has multiple FOIA lawsuits in motion against the FBI, and earlier this month he filed a new one. His suit describes his numerous attempts to obtain information over the past two years, and the FBI's frequent response that it can't locate what he's looking for.
The FBI has established "countless means" of foiling FOIA requests, including a process by which searches fail "by design."
Despite the existence of two much better search applications within ACS -- along with newer search technologies implemented since then -- the FBI "almost always refuses" to use those more modern systems on the grounds that they're no more likely to produce results, and that using them would be "unduly burdensome and seriously wasteful of FBI resources," Shapiro says.
"The FBI's assertion is akin to suggesting that a search of a limited and arbitrarily produced card catalogue at a vast library is as likely to locate book pages containing a specified search term as a full text search of a database containing digitized versions of all the books in that library," Shapiro said. "Simply, the FBI's assertion is absurd."
In January, a judge in the District Court for the District of Columbia ruled in Shapiro's favor in a related case, finding that the FBI's policy is "fundamentally at odds" with FOIA. The FBI, meanwhile, has argued that Shapiro's work constitutes a threat to national security.
In his latest lawsuit, filed July 4 in the same court, Shapiro requests that the FBI turn over the documents he says were withheld from him, waive the fees it tried to charge him, and cover his attorney fees and other litigation expenses.
Access to information about the operations of government is essential to democracy, but FOIA is "broken," Shapiro said. "If we hope to know even some of what our government is truly up to, FOIA must not only be defended against the FBI and others who view transparency as a threat, but strengthened and dramatically expanded."
The FBI is a component of the U.S. Department of Justice, which declined to comment for this story.
"Many government agencies deal with software older than the interns servicing them," said Raymond Van Dyke, a technology attorney based in Washington, D.C.
In time, with more challenges to the FOIA protocol and better safeguards built into the FBI's current Sentinel software, the bureau "will better honor FOIA requests," Van Dyke predicted. "For now, however, the protocol is to go back to the mainframe era -- the days of Reagan."
