At the National Security Agency (NSA), secrecy is their business, so it's no surprise to me that they would resist FOIA requests, even though (theoretically) they work for us. What does surprise me is how lame their excuses are when they block non-exempt FOIA disclosures.
Recently, there was a report that described how the agency denied a FOIA request by claiming the agency didn't have the capacity for keyword searches of emails between its own employees and others. This from an agency that collects and can search for data in hundreds of millions of phone calls around the world.
Now, in another instance, NSA responded to an emailed FOIA request by contacting the requesting party to say that the agency couldn't find the requester's correct address. (Can't make up stuff this ridiculous!) Read on.
Atlantic Wire wrote, "It's possible we've been overly generous in our assessments of the
intelligence gathering capabilities of the NSA. They would have
responded to our FOIA request, you see, but they had the wrong address
– and there was no way for them to get that address [as the agency had never heard of Google, apparently] but to email us and
ask for it."
The article went on, quoting NSA, " ' This email is in response to your request submitted to the National
Security Agency (NSA) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) office. Your
request letter, dated 10 June 2013, was received in our office on 1 July
and assigned Case Number 72150. We mailed our response to your FOIA
request on or about 11 July 2013.' "
The NSA quote continued, " ' However, the USPS returned our correspondence today, as a “Return to
sender – Attempted Not Known – Unable to Forward.” Please provide your
most current, complete address (apartment #, business name, suite #,
floor # etc) so that we may resend our response to you.' "
Atlantic Wire says it had provided a valid USPS address in the first place, but had indicated that it would prefer to have the agency's response by email.
It looks to me like NSA is pretending to be taken in by its own misinformation. Reminds me of the old Abbott and Costello comedy routine, "Who's on first?".
