Altoona officials are refusing to release records tied to four police officers at the center of misconduct allegations in Luigi Mangione’s high-profile murder trial.
The city withheld any background on the officers, including prior complaints or disciplinary actions that could shed light on their credibility — and we're appealing the
I don’t know why all of that information isn’t just public to begin with.
Because it would cause too much societal whiplash to, all at once, we see a transformation from a world where information like this is closed away, to a world where it’s all public. Often the accessibility of information depends on logistics like where data should be stored, and whether something counts as “public” if some information can only be accessed by, let’s say, booking an appointment to see paper records only available at an archive.
FOI are a concession. Legislation that allows them is how we bridge the gap between the abstract political ideology of “this information should be public”, and the pragmatic challenge of information infrastructure. That is to say that you’re entirely right, and that information obtainable via FOIA should just be public info. However, submitting skillful FOIAs can be a powerful tool towards making more information free generally — more FOIA requests being made can encourage organisations to revamp their information management such that they can fulfill FOIA requests more easily (perhaps even making information available to pre-empt such requests). Repeatedly non-compliant organisations may be forced to comply, if held accountable by an effective information commissioner or ombudsman. (That’s a big “if”).
In short, they’re a step towards pushing for more widespread, public information