John raised some excellent points. in reveiwing the various stories from the Indiana FOIA investigation I noted that one public official did not release the records requested because the report contained social security numbers. the report was very large and it would have taken an inordinate amount of time and effort to redact the SSNs from the report. As a result the office would be in violation of the law which stated that the records must be produced within 24 hours. talk about being caught between a rock and hard place. "do I delay producing the records to protect confidential information or do I produce the record within the required timeframe so as to satisfy the law?" on the whole I am in favor of the various FOIA laws, BUT I do believe that in many cases the press (and FOIA advocates) don't really understand how records are created and maintained. many seem to be nothing more than fishing expeditions with the sense of "gee look what I caught" being the end result. While it is well and good that the press tests the various FOIA laws are they really and truly disinterested, unbiased investigators? Maybe the best thing would be for each state to conduct regular FOIA audits, to be conducted by the state agency responsible for doing audits. Internal auditors follow a strict methodology designed to test processes. And audit reports require a formal response from the organizations audited. May be this is something that the archival and records management community could work on together ie review FOIA laws and recommend areas for improvement based upon new legislation that was passed subsequent to the passage of the original state FOIA legislation peterk List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance