MuckRock

What started out as an attempt to answer a (seemingly) simple question - what is the oldest computer still in use by a government agency - has seen spiraled into a project that touches on issues of national security, record keeping, and finally finding out whatever happened to Zeos.

From Abbie Hoffman to Malcolm X, Ol' Dirty Bastard to the Insane Clown Posse, FBI files read like a veritable Who's Who of the 20th Century. This project aims to sift through the hundreds of thousands of agency archival material we've managed to get released, so we can better understand ...

33% funded
$1675.00 raised
11 backers
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Over the past year, our FOIA requests have released thousands of documents that show how for-profit prisons have leveraged the legal system to their advantage, letting companies pick-and-choose inmates to off-load costs, ignore complaints and concerns, and create dangerous conditions for prisoners and staff alike. This is all done while ...

100% funded
$4025.00 raised
97 backers
Ended

As part of our collaboration with Campaign Zero, MuckRock requested use of force policies from the largest police departments in the country.

For almost every city around America, fines and fees are a useful law enforcement tool, offering a way to punish everyday infractions without the immediate threat of jail or a permanent mark on a criminal record. But what happens when governments stop thinking of fines as a deterrent, but as ...

22% funded
$1130.00 raised
17 backers
Ended

This project will evaluate Massachusetts municipalities’ responsiveness to records requests, as well as which have kept up with reviewing and releasing the executive session minutes of their local boards, and which have not.

The programs being designed and implemented across the country under the auspices of Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) have drawn fire from Muslim community members and civil rights activists. They are criticized for unfairly targeting Muslims, being used for surveillance under the pretext of community outreach, and being based on an ...

No one, including federal airspace czars, seems to know with any authority just how many drones are flying around domestic airspace. The Federal Aviation Administration has prophesied that there could be upwards of 30,000 drones in the air by 2030, but lists of which government players are flying UAVs at ...

3 requests

I’ve always struggled to think that searches are being carried out in the right zone. Now two years after the searches are going on, every day it passes, I struggle a little more.

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0 backers
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64 federal agencies. 4 rounds. 1 winner. The CIA still hasn’t acknowledged our request. Who will be named Most Responsive FOIA Office?

As we saw in Ferguson, and most recently in Dallas and Baton Rouge, every day American police look less like a neighborhood watch and more like a paramilitary force. Here's how and why that happened.

Massachusetts, your officials aren't protecting you from the dangers of gas leaks. It's up to us to demand answers.

62 requests

A look into the wrongdoings of the Reagan administration and campaign, including the October Surprise, Debategate, MCA Records, the Inslaw and Wedtech scandals and the Iran-Contra scandal, which has been called Reagan's unchecked abuse of Presidential power.

24 requests

Everybody is looking for a pill that makes them look and feel better, and the dietary supplement industry is happy to oblige. With new products hitting the market daily, this project aims to catalogue the new dietary ingredient notifications that manufacturers have sent to the FDA, which have been accepted, ...

14 requests

This project is to document the June 8, 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty as completely as possible from sources subject to the Freedom of Information Act as well as other similar laws and regulations.

2 articles

Peter Thiel - co-founder of both PayPal and Palantir and an early Facebook investor - has profoundly reshaped industry after industry and, ultimately, remade the world to better fit his radical vision of the future. With MuckRock’s Thiel Fellowship, we want to help journalists and researchers better understand this pivotal ...

5% funded
$266.67 raised
8 backers
Ended

Everybody's a critic. And now, thanks to the FCC's easy online complaint submission form, it's never been easier to direct those criticisms to the people that need to hear it most - the United States Federal government. This project aims to collect all the FCC complaints generated by the most ...

30 requests

Unicorn Riot reporters have filed numerous public records requests to various law enforcement and government agencies in North Dakota in the process of their reporting on struggles against the Dakota Access Pipeline. You can find them all here.

The Chicago Police Department (CPD) is using its Narcotics asset forfeiture funds to purchase controversial surveillance equipment. Help Lucy Parsons Labs and MuckRock conduct an independent audit of this fund to find out how this forfeiture money is being spent. We need to find out what new surveillance technologies are ...

Every day, American inmates find themselves on the open road, hurtling toward their next holding cell. With little in the way of medical training, food, bathrooms, and patience, the circumstances can be far worse than where they're going - if they make it.

Project SpyLighter launched unofficially with the September 16, 2013 responsive documents on a FOIA of Vupen's contract with the NSA.

Since 1997, police departments nationwide have been able to apply for former military equipment through the Department of Defense’s 1033 program – but only with a recent increase in visibility has proof of departmental training been required for the high-powered and heavily armored vehicles obtained through this initiative.

8 requests

Reclaim The Records is an activist group of genealogists, historians, researchers, and open government advocates. We are collecting information about archivally important data sets that are not available online or on microfilm, and we then use state and Federal FOI laws and Open Data initiatives to get that information released ...

48 articles

Requester's Voice is a regular series that interviews top FOIA and public records experts about how to get the most out of the request process.

Call it what you will, experts agree that solitary confinement sucks. The technicalities of terminology may seem like a small issue–on the inside, there can be dozens of names for the "hole" you're in – but for policy makers and and rule breakers, the official glossary category can have important ...

Police departments are increasingly tracking your face, your fingerprints, your tattoos — and even your DNA. Help the Electronic Frontier Foundation and MuckRock uncover how local agencies are tracking you and bring some much-needed transparency to the murky world of biometric surveillance.

For over a century, dental professionals have been using amalgams containing mercury to fill cavities. But in an age of assumption testing, is tradition enough to keep it up? Help MuckRock find out what the federal government has to say about the most controversial element in our mouths today.

0% funded
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0 backers
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11 articles

In 2015, the Massachusetts legislature seriously took on the issue of reforming its woefully inadequate public records laws for the first time since the early '70s. But change does not come easily to the Commonwealth, and open gov advocates found themselves faced with an up(Beacon)battle over even the mildest of ...

Todd Feathers' investigation into the controversial world of police civil seizure exposes a troubling lack of consistency in policies and paperwork around asset forfeiture.

Cell phone surveillance technology has outpaced policy and public awareness. MuckRock is investigating precisely how law enforcement across the country use cell phones to locate and track individuals.

50 requests

Weapons are a ubiquitous tool for any police department in the United States. In Massachusetts, the choice of police weapons is delegated to the more than 340 individual police agencies within the state. What weapons have been chosen to provide safety and security to their operating areas?

If the federal government can’t treat gun violence as a public health problem, then we will.

We're partnering with LittleSis to launch a crowdfunded, crowdsourced campaign to reveal how police across the country are using social media to monitor people and events.