FOI requests reached record high in 2004

Americans made more than 4 million requests to the federal government under the Freedom of Information Act in 2004, a new high for requests in a single year, according to a new review by the Associated Press.

“Four million requests in a year is pretty impressive, and it shows that the Freedom of Information Act is a vibrant and important tool,” said Harry Hammitt, who publishes Access Reports, a newsletter on freedom of information laws.

But because as many as 80 percent of last year’s requests were routine queries for family, personal or medical records, Hammitt cautioned that the public should not assume they led to the release of the historic, political or declassified files people often associate with FOIA.

Requests last year increased from 3.26 million in 2003, according to a survey of reports from more than 70 federal agencies and departments. Most of the increase was due to the 1.5 million requests received by the Social Security Administration, which reported twice as many requests in 2004 than in 2003. Social Security officials said Wednesday that most of those requests were people seeking genealogical information.