This might be an unfair question, but if you had to do some like back of the envelope math,

how many FOIA requests do you think you have filed in your lifetime?

Wow, I've never thought about that.

That is a great question. Wow. I've never thought about that. That is a great question.

That's Joseph Cox, one of the founders of 404 Media. It's safe to say, he files a lot of

of Freedom of Information Act requests with the government. I definitely file at least five a week. So, you know, it's maybe not every day,

but on average it's going to be about that spread across. I've been a journalist for 10 years,

probably doing that for five years. So somebody else can do the math who's listening.

But it's a lot of FOIA requests and a lot of experience doing this over the years, yeah, with varying levels of success, I would say.

The Freedom of Information Act, FOIA, was first introduced in the shadow of the Cold War and in an era of rising government secrecy.

And the central idea is that any person, citizen or not,

can file a request with the U.S. government for public records. Many people might not know this,

but under U.S. law, you are legally allowed to request any government record, any record

created by the government, any record held by the government.

Now, that doesn't mean they're going to give it to you.

But legally, you can request that.

And journalists do this all the time for police reports or contracts with agencies.

And agencies are supposed to provide a response around 20 days later.

That almost never happens. They were often extended again and again, and usually again,

for months, if not years. It really depends on the agency. From local police, you can get records in a couple of

weeks. With the FBI, I think I'm still waiting on requests I made easily in 2019, if not earlier.

A little over a year ago, Joseph filed a FOIA request with immigration and customs enforcement

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