From: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V4 #46 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Precedence: bulk Skunk Works Digest Sunday, 24 October 1993 Volume 04 : Number 046 In this issue: FOIA info FOIA Requests Consortium? See the end of the digest for information on subscribing to the skunk-works or skunk-works-digest mailing lists and on how to retrieve back issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: kowan@ai.mit.edu (Rich Cowan) Date: Sat, 23 Oct 93 09:26:32 EDT Subject: FOIA info I noticed a FOIA request on this list a while ago from TRADER@cup.portal.com. I have some constructive feedback; I work with an organization that has helped students get information about the military program on their own campuses, and have written about using the freedom of information act (FOIA). Basically, the request for "copies of any documents summarizing.. Senior Citizen" and "information on whether this aircraft has been tested at Groom Lake" The problem with this request is that it is too general to get a good response. A cardinal rule is that you have to identify specific records which exist; to ask DOD to search their file systems for any documents on a particular topic is unwieldy and likely to be denied. On this request, you could ask for a copy of the "Work Unit Summary and Program Element Descriptive Summaries" for DOD program element 0401316F for the years 1985 through 1993. That would refer to the actual record system the DOD uses to track research in progress, and to the huge book of military research program element summaries which is available through the National Technical Information Service for about $90 for each agency (unclassified summaries only) each year. If you want more information on this, please e-mail me. - -Rich Cowan University Converison Project Box 748, Cambridge, MA 02142 617-354-9363 ------------------------------ From: Rick Pavek Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1993 12:59:15 -0700 Subject: FOIA Requests Consortium? Rich Cowan dropped us a good guideline. Thanks. I would suggest that we might organize and make FOIA requests in a coordinated way... no sense in a lot of requests for the same thing... How about someone compiling a list of request subjects? I'd be willing to help out, to some degree, with converting some of the results to ASCII and sending them out to the list... and perhaps contributing to the costs of obtaining the info. Anybody else? Rick SR-75/XR-7 _|_*O*_|_ | Rick Pavek \ __|__ / | HA!! kuryakin@halcyon.com \_______/_(O)_\_______/ | Ruby - \___/---\___/ | Galactic Gumshoe ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V4 #46 ******************************** To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "listserv@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu". If you want to subscribe something other than the account the mail is coming from, such as a local redistribution list, then append that address to the "subscribe" command; for example, to subscribe "local-skunk-works": subscribe skunk-works-digest local-skunk-works@your.domain.net To unsubscribe, send mail to the same address, with the command: unsubscribe skunk-works-digest in the body. Administrative requests, problems, and other non-list mail can be sent to either "skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu" or, if you don't like to type a lot, "prm@ecn.purdue.edu". A non-digest (direct mail) version of this list is also available; to subscribe to that instead, replace all instances of "skunk-works-digest" in the commands above with "skunk-works". Back issues are available for anonymous FTP from harbor.ecn.purdue.edu, in /pub/skunk-works/digest/vNN.nMMM (where "NN" is the volume number, and "MMM" is the issue number).