2) File a civil suit. (May cost a few bucks)

3) Organize civic groups to attend their board meeting and ask tough questions and/or disrupt their proceedings (an old liberal tradition).

Ooops, can't do that any longer according to the Speaker Pelosi and the liberal wags..that's UN-AMERICAN.

You'll have to stick to No. 1 or No. 2.

But hey, we all know you are right… TP knows all!

Suggest you do some research into on-line security before you make such sweeping statements.

(BTW recording the MAC address along with the IPs as seen by a proxy see-through, is a much surer way identifying users. But I guess that cyber forensics isn't your strong suit.)

If best-in-class companies have faith in storing all their data electronically, I don't know why you would be so concerned here. Moreover, storage is CHEAP! Servers cost way less than file rooms.

Again, the so-called conservative's viewpoint doesn't jibe with her ideology. What's wrong?

But for a died-in-the-wool conspiracy theorist, like you Mr. B_1, and Really and Tinder, too, I would think that a contemporaneously generated hard-coy audit trail would make your case much more easily proven.

Electronic records are easily altered. And while an audit log is possible to track change, that log too is subject to being altered. (A script kiddie could wipe our your computer in a fraction of a second.)

No. The check against abuse is in the contemporaneous hard copy.

There are issues that the brave new world has yet to get a handle on. This is one of them.

But that would require a basic understanding of math, something conservatives are incapable of.

Is there anyone other than you or one of your associates, i.e., one who is truly independent, who has concured with your assessment? Or are we looking at a sample of one?"

Okay, Ikcape(1 or 2?) here's a partial rundown. For the HUD request, under the Federal FOIA law, I got an answer denying a request because Hud had provided information before and the records were now in storage. This answer was given long after the 10 day limit for replying to FOIA requests.
The reason that I think this is not correct is that I can read and can count to 10. In this case I phoned the HUD counsel's office, the attorney I spoke to said that she had doubts about whether this request had been handled correctly and I received the documents I was looking for. I take this as a pretty strong indication that the original request had been handled improperly.

With regard to the BRA, I requested a document I had previously seen, the redevelopment plan of the building I was living in, ie 193-213 Kelton Street in Allston. The BRA told me that it wouldn't provide it. The Secretery of State's office told me that they wanted to broker a compromise between my getting the public document I requested and what the BRA wanted to provide. I take that as an indication that the Secretery of State's office was not going to enforce the law as written.

Both these requests concerned the redevelopment of Governor Apartments on Kelton Street in Allston. The HUD official who rejected my FOIA subsequently became a Vice President with the landlord/developer. Similarly, according to the SOS, the former BRA official who would negotiate what documents I was entitled to was also now working for the developer. A big conspiracy to frustrate my FOIA requests? Of course not. But a conflict of interest? Yes. And were my requests handled correctly? No.

As for my request to the DSS (unrelated to the above cases), the agency simply ignored my FOIA for a month and a half. Then they provided a heavily redacted document that itself refered to other documents in my file, which DSS claimed didn't exist. I appealed to the SOS, which after almost two years referred the case to the AG, both the SOS and the AG were explicit, both in writing and verbally, that DSS had not handled my case correctly. The DSS lawyer also admitted to mishandling my original request when, at long last he sent the remaining document. So, I have to say, it was unanimous.

Do you need more documentation? The HUD and BRA requests were a long time ago, but I still remember the names of the public officials involved and of course, my old landlord. I don't think they belong on Dan's blog without his explicit permission, but if anyone cares maybe I can email them to Dan and he can pass them on. You can find the appeals decision of the DSS case (not the FOIA but the whole case), if you search for "Adoption of Betsy". When you find it note the passage where the unnamed appeals judge claims that I was trying to interfere with the children after they had formed a bond with the adoptive parents. I filed the FOIA when the youngest children were about six weeks old. Do you think that the delaying tactics of DSS, which were mirrored in every aspect of this case suited the agency's purpose?

Sorry if this is long–but you asked for it. Now let me ask you–where the hell do you get the idea that I make things up? I post under my real name, and I've never posted anything on this blog that was made up. You don't know anything about me, but you seem smugly certain that I fit your stereotype of a liberal and that a couple of supercilious comments will nullify everything I say. Who put that idea in your head?

The issue of this thread has always been the equating of cost of file to denial of access. And both the evidence and the arguments for that conclusion have been woefully thin.

PP's comments regarding hard copy records are spot on.

It's a real shame that you can't port them directly to your Kindle.

It must be a conspiracy against liberty, justice and entitlement! Man the barricades, fellow patriots!

But those are other subjects, and I surely do not wish to be accused, unfairly or not, of hijacking such and important thread.

My critique of Dan's initial post stands.