[Music]
welcome back to the yuma theater after
lunch break uh where we have another
four entertaining sessions for you
the next speaker is justin warren
uh he will be speaking on how to annoy
the government with freedom information
requests
just as a hobbyist
programmer mostly in python
you may know him from such activities as
yelling at the government about foi and
making silly stickers about how terrible
computers are
when he isn't writing terrible code and
writing submissions to government
inquiries he runs a consulting company
justin will endeavor to allow time for
questions at the end so please enter any
questions in the tab in venulis
if he does run out of time he promises
to
answer questions in the chat or
he agrees to be contacted at the contact
information in the final slide
over to justin
thank you very much and thank you
everyone for coming along and
paying attention to my my silly chat
um hopefully you find it interesting so
my talk today is how to annoy the
government with freedom of information
requests
no how hard could that be um as someone
said earlier this week that's not really
very difficult you just have to file
them like ah
but how do you do that you have to file
a valid request and you have to send it
to the right agency in the right form
and whatnot so i'm going to tell you how
to do that
there's two ways there is easy mode and
hard mode now as a rich white guy i am
an expert in easy mode but i will also
touch on hard mode a little bit at least
as i've experienced it
um not all the agencies get annoyed if
you make an foi request some of them are
actually not too bad and the ones that
are helpful everything in this talk will
help you with them as well in fact it
will help you to value and appreciate
those agencies even more
it will also help you with the other
kinds of agencies that are say
a little less helpful
now the first thing is that freedom of
information is all about documents um if
you read the abstract and i assume none
of you did so i'll give give you a quick
preview of what it was about anyway so
this talk is all about the freedom of
information act and the process that
that covers and it's particularly i'm
going to
i'm going to concentrate on the
australian federal freedom of
information act so there are state-based
acts which are very similar and a lot of
what you learned today can apply to them
but i'm most familiar with the one that
deals with the federal
the federal jurisdiction it's also quite
similar in other nations so if you are
coming to us from a country outside of
australia or watching this talk later on
then you may find some of this useful in
your own local agencies as well
but again i am concentrating on the
federal one and it is based in australia
um now why would i talk to you at all
about this and why why would i focus on
that i was like well i have a little bit
of experience at foi part of why i
wanted to put this talk together was
that i actually started off like many of
you knowing absolutely nothing about
what i was doing
so i'm going to try to give you a bit of
a quick overview of what i've learned in
the last five or six years since i took
up this really really quite silly hobby
i started off just going hmm i'd
actually quite like to know some
information and there's this thing
called the foi act
what happens if i just try to use it
so that's what i did i started off
knowing basically nothing and learnt by
doing it i put in an foi request and the
first one you know it started innocently
enough i put my request in i had a not
terrible time the agency was pretty
helpful i got the information i was
after the bureaucrats i dealt with were
helpful and courteous and we figured our
way through things together i learned a
bunch of stuff and i kind of had fun
and then robo debt happened um
it happened to nerd snipe me really
quite badly because my interest in
governance and interest in transparency
intersected with knowing things about
computers and this was one of those
government attempts at computer ring
that i thought was clearly going to be
broken and from the very outset so i
went let's have a look at what you've
actually put into the process before you
start this and see why you're trying to
do this obviously dumb thing
and so
then i have kept doing it um and i
learned more about the process and they
didn't give me the information i wanted
so i experienced the glories of the
administrative affairs tribunal
and i kept doing more of it
and more of it
and what this agency failed to realize
is that i can be extremely motivated by
vengeance and spite
call it tenacity and resilience if you
like all bloody-minded stupidness
it works for me
but why would you bother doing this well
sometimes you do actually get the
information out of it and handy
journalists will write about what you
discovered and my idea was that
hopefully this could actually change
some behavior and maybe if we do fewer
stupid things that will leave room for
us to do some intelligent and great
things
and other people have seen what i did
and copied me which i get a bit of
vicarious pleasure from so eliza only
started doing this a few months ago and
she hit me up for some questions say hey
how do you do this i'm not sure that i
know this it's actually not that
difficult um give it a burl
and she's now annoying the government
with every much as as i can and you too
can become a snarky antagonist why not
it is actually fun it's like solving a
puzzle or going on an adventure so think
of it as like an extra nerdy form of d d
where the dungeon master hates you
but remember before you go on an
adventure you should probably pack a few
things get your backpack ready
so
what do you need
to have an foi adventure let's have a
look at some basic equipment that i've
found is very very useful and some of
the things that i kind of wish i'd done
right back at the beginning if only i'd
known what i was doing a bit earlier so
hopefully i'll help you with some things
that you'll realize a little bit earlier
on now i figure that since you're here
listening to this talk
you probably have an above average
interest in doing this so if you're only
going to do one request you wouldn't
need anywhere near this many tools
but if you mean to do a few more of them
or like me you're prone to picking up
silly hobbies that might actually become
a bit of a habit if we can start to put
some of these good practices in at the
beginning it'll make life a lot easier
later on
that's what i've this is what i've found
handy if you find tools that you think
are going to help you great build your
own toolkit that's what all of this is
about
now the first thing that you're going to
need is some internet
i'm assuming that since you're here
watching a talk which is at an online
conference that you've probably figured
out the internet and browser parts of
what you actually need
so you're pretty much already on your
way
now mobile is actually okay for doing a
lot of this stuff but there's a lot of
typing and reading and depending on how
large your phablet is or your phone some
they're massive these days i can't i
might hands are too small i actually
like a smaller phone
but if you have a laptop or a chromebook
you don't need a massive developer grade
workstation with 300 gpus or anything
it's just you're mostly dealing with
text so this will be fine
now with your browser one thing that i
do recommend is grabbing an extension
called zotero i think that's how you
pronounce it so zotero is a citation
manager it actually lives uh beside the
browser but it has plugins for all the
different browsers and also document
writers
now it's a little bit like bookmarking
in your browser so you can save
something and come back to it later but
it deals with the really boring parts of
writing quite formal documents academics
will know all about citations
it does the citation formatting for you
and it understands what some of the
standard forms of doing that are so
if you actually have to do any kind of
academic writing and you haven't been
using something like zotero now is a
great time to start
you will start to wonder how you ever
dealt with uh dealt with dealing with
this beforehand
it has all kinds of fancy functions and
features that i think make it better for
you than just having a standard browser
uh bookmarking tool or one of the notes
tools like say evernote or um i can't i
don't know delicious even
old bookmarking tool pin board is sort
of useful you can sort of make
annotations but they don't do all the
things that zotero does zotero is free
it's open source it runs on most of the
browser most operating systems it has
plugins for most of the browsers and
major document editors
it's great i really recommend it
the next tool that i think you should
use is called write to know specifically
right to know dot org dot a u
this is based on some open source
software which is available in multiple
jurisdictions throughout the world again
this one is focused on australia
mostly again around federal agencies
this website handles the workflow for
you so
it will find you can search for the
agency that you want type that into the
box and it will then email to the
appropriate contact address for freedom
of information requests you don't have
to look it up yourself and it will then
manage the correspondence that ties to
that one freedom of information request
so that you don't have to track it
manually yourself it knows the timings
so when you should expect a response and
when you get one what do i do with this
and sort of it helps you work through
the process i find that really handy
it's particularly good if you do more
than one there have been times where
i've had three or four on the go at once
and if i tried to manage that myself
using my own systems and manually with
spreadsheets or some sort of task
tracker i i just forget that i have to
do them
it's wonderful for the reminders part
alone
the other great thing about it is that
most of it is public so you can go and
see what other people have done you can
go and look at all of my freedom of
information requests that i've done
through this and you can see what i did
and you can learn from my mistakes and
you can then
make annotations to it you can cut and
paste from that to do your own things i
do it all the time so it's it helps you
to learn the process as well as actually
doing the process so it's really great
it's run by the folks at open australia
they're not for profit please give them
money so that they can continue to run
great sites like this and help us all to
get information from the government
now speaking of information from the
government
the regulator the office of the
australian information commissioner is
responsible for freedom of information
among other things privacy and a few
other bits
they write a thing called the fli
guidelines and this is an explanation
both for individuals like you and me
and also for government agencies about
what the practice of the freedom of
information act should actually look
like
so it explains the law not just the act
but also all the case law and all the
decisions that have been made through
time over since the first act was was
passed in i think 1982
so it helps to consolidate the knowledge
and explain it in ways that you can
generally follow and it's broken down
into sections so you can go and learn
about the bit that's appropriate for
what you're trying to do
it's wonderful this is how i've learned
a huge amount about how foi works um and
when i've been having to do appeals and
so on this is how i've helped understand
what is the process for doing that what
do i do next
um i've done quite a few appeals as it
turns out so i've gotten used to that
they also handle the complaints i've
done a few of them as well
so it's a great place to get for you to
go and learn and to go and read the
decisions that they make so you can kind
of get a feel for how the whole thing
works in practice
another part of how that works is
another website i'd recommend which is
called austria so a lot of the things
from the oaic's website will link to
actual legal things on osley so ostley
is the australian legal
something institute i think i forget
what is it legal information institute
it's right there on the page
uh this should be a public service but
it isn't it's another not-for-profit
paid for by essentially contributions
from a lot of law firms and law
universities um i don't know why it's
not a public service
there is a there is legislation on
government websites but the formatting
is really hard to navigate it's
basically just one big long document um
this the osley format of things has
links to individual sections so you can
very quickly find bits and pieces it
also has lots of uh case law on there so
it makes the law
in in its entirety the broad bit much
more accessible to people like you and
me
you can go and search for things the
search is pretty good it's not brilliant
but it mostly works and it also cross
references to a whole bunch of other
bits and pieces so you can link from one
piece of legislation off to another and
end up having seven billion tabs open as
i'm sure we all like to do
it's how i learned again a lot of how
this works is i started reading the
actual law itself and learned as i went
this is the documentation to the
operating system of a society
essentially
now the next part of this is that along
with going and looking at specific acts
within this you can actually go and find
specific case law so these are
individual decisions that have been made
by a judge or someone from the
administrative affairs tribunal or the
information commissioner themselves
and that's through another thing also
run by the folks who run ostly which is
called law site
law sites great for looking for specific
cases there's a particular referencing
method that they use which is sort of
like a a year and the jurisdiction and
then a number afterwards so that is a
way of you finding a specific case
reference
you can also use right at the bottom of
the search box there you can refer to
something like freedom of information
act and then which section so
you might be looking for all the cases
that have referred to section 11 or
section 34 of the freedom of information
act and then you can look at that and it
brings a list of them by how often
they've been cited so the most popular
ones are at the top so it's a little bit
like a search engine well it is it's a
search engine for case law and it will
show you the stuff that is sort of the
most important right at the beginning
the next bit that you might need is a
document editor
that's if you want to start writing
things down in greater detail than you
just want to put into the website on
right to know
i find it handy to draft out what i plan
to do so that i can kind of think
through it a bit particularly when i'm
responding to agencies in some of the
more complicated cases that i've had to
deal with um you probably won't need to
use this as much
but it's useful if you're concerned that
firefox might decide that it's time to
reboot today and you might lose all of
your work um that's always interesting
so put it somewhere where it saves your
progress and then you can come back and
refer to it later on
and maybe use that for some of your
other cases
so here's a handy checklist
take a screenshot if you like print it
out for yourself build your own
create your own checklist for how you
how you do it
but
we're ready to go
so let's have a look at how we actually
do your first foi request
okay
i'm going to use an example of one of
mine
again you can go and look this one up on
right to know and
grab all of it for yourself and use it
as a template i encourage you to do so
this is the one i did most recently as
you can see it wasn't successful
originally um i have appealed we are now
in the waiting stage but uh it can show
you a bunch of how the process works and
in particular it will show you what my
standard request looks like
the first thing that we want to do is to
make it clear that this is a freedom of
information request
it has to be clear and valid and in
writing so by writing it into right to
know we've taken care of that bit so
tick off off the checkbox
on this you'll see that i've said if
possible give me the information using
informal or administrative means
that means you don't have to go and use
the freedom of information request
process if you don't want to mr agency
or mrs agency
um you can just give me the information
if you like then we can all go home and
get on with our lives wouldn't that be
nice
but in some cases agencies don't want to
do that in which case then you are
invoking the freedom of information act
and making it very clear to them
that you they have to follow that
particular process so that's a
boilerplate i just put that at the top
of all of my requests
now remember we mentioned before that
foi is about documents
you have to ask for documents not just
information
you can
that is in certain dot so you can ask
for documents containing information
you just can't ask say give me this info
you have to specifically ask for types
of documents now a document
in inverted commas
as a category is quite broad under the
act so that includes things like emails
text messages photographs videos audio
anything that already exists
it can be electronic it doesn't actually
have to be printed things it doesn't
have to be sitting here on a vhs or a
cassette tape or on a dvd or being you
know a pdf that's been printed out it
can be sitting in in a system as a pdf
or as an email you can ask for those
but it must already exist
there's a little caveat on this where
there's a very small edge case of when
new documents can be created in response
to foi but it practically never really
happens
so the best thing for you to do is to
concentrate on documents that already
exist and you're asking for those
documents
but you can describe them
in terms of what is the information that
they contain you don't have to know the
exact name or serial number or some
other you know
drive path or something for the
documents all you have to do is describe
them in such a way that they can be
found
[Music]
that's where we come to the next point
which is about limiting what you're
asking for
you can't just ask for everything
there are some reasonable reasons for
why you can't do that
asking for everything means that they do
nothing but respond to freedom of
information requests and lots of
government agencies actually are
supposed to have a day job they're
supposed to actually do things the
department of health is supposed to be
looking after everybody's health in the
middle of a pandemic who knew
so if you go and ask them for something
which is largely going to divert all of
their attention away from doing what
they're supposed to be doing on their
you know day-to-day work and say no no
you need to now give us every copy of a
document that you've created since the
beginning of time
they're allowed to say no
it's what's called a section 24 a a
practical refusal reason and there are
basically two categories of why they can
say no one is it's too hard
the other one is that your request is
too vague so if it's not possible to
figure out what the doc whether this
document is or isn't in the scope that
you've asked for that means that your
request is too vague
now if you do this by accident and say
i've asked for too much stuff or it's
too vague or we don't understand you or
this is going to be too much work they
are supposed to help you to narrow the
scope of your request and make it
something tractable
that's called a section 24 a b
consultation process it's in the act
about how that's supposed to work
they don't have to be terribly
prescriptive though in fact the
information commissioner encourages them
to be helpful the whole point of this
act is that disclosure of information is
good it's public information held in the
public interest
so they should help you
of course some agencies don't enjoy
being helpful so we'll deal with that in
just a moment
now the form of the documents
um if you don't specify what form then
the agency can pretty much give it to
you whatever form that they think is
best
that's not always appropriate i always
ask for electronic copies because i want
them to email stuff to me i don't want
them to post me a dvd
sometimes that may actually be the best
way of giving you the information so
many agencies don't understand what ftp
is and haven't figured out how to create
a dropbox or equivalent file sharing
service where they can put something
there and you can then download a 200mb
audio file
in those cases they will probably burn a
cd and post it to you
which is not unreasonable it's still
sort of electronic it's just the method
in which they get it to you instead of
using the internet but for everything
else if you don't say i want an
electronic copy they could by rights
print everything out onto pieces of
paper put it into the post and then have
that get lost
or eventually turn up several months
later after it's made it through the
olds post weird system that's having
huge problems at the moment so ask for
electronic copies and that helps to just
shortcut that process
so here's your foi checklist of
what the uh what the things are that you
should generally use so that's quick
review
is it an admin access or foi act request
we want it to be an foi act request
have you listed documents and have you
been specific about what documents
you're after
have you excluded drafts if you just say
i want everything then they might
actually give you every copy of the
draft that's another way to limit the
scope just ask for the final version if
that's all you're interested in
sometimes you might not be
a date range is again another great way
don't say i want everything from the
beginning of time i actually only care
about stuff that was done in the last 12
months 18 months what form do you want
the documents to be given to you in and
is this a is this a personal data
request and there's a quick caveat on
that using right to know
is not appropriate for data that's about
you as an individual or indeed other
individuals if there's private personal
information you can ask for that under
the free movement under freedom of
information act
but you won't you shouldn't be doing
that through right to know and in fact
you'll you'll be discouraged from doing
that in the way right to know does
things do that in another method
directly to the agency by email or or
bringing them up or something like that
uh well it'll you can't just bring them
you'll need to put it in writing so do
it through email but you'll need to do
that directly
there are some advantages to doing it
that way we can talk about that in a
moment
the hardest part of foi requests is
figuring out what you want
spend some time thinking about what you
really want to know
and then is there some kind of standard
form of document that that information
will already exist in if you figure out
what that is that makes things a lot
easier
government agencies are bureaucracies
which means that they write everything
down on standard forms constantly once
you know what the standard forms
generally look like then you have a
pretty good idea about where the
information is that you're going to go
look for
you'll get better with practice so
go practice
as you start doing more of these you'll
just start to get a feel for what
government actually does and how it
behaves and what sort of stuff is around
and if in doubt ask for emails you know
that emails exist and correspondence is
one of the things that will already be
there and you are allowed to ask for
the process hopefully the happy path
process will look for you like this
if you you start off with you send your
request the consultation to narrow scope
will happen and then you might have to
pay some search and uh and recovery fees
we'll have again we'll talk about that
in a little moment um it will cost you
time
possibly money um that's why this is a
hobby a hobby that makes you money is
called a job
and hopefully this is not your job
and you can stop any time you like
the decision should get made within 30
days and then
you'll get your documents after that
with a bit of luck
of course that's the happy path
the process on the unhappy path which
i'm sure is what many of you are looking
forward to hearing about
is mostly short flurries of activity
followed by long periods of waiting and
boredom
you start off by sending your request
and then sometime later there will be a
fight about the consultation
because they either will or won't try to
consult with you and then you'll argue
over the scope for a bit um then they
will try to charge you a whole bunch of
money for stuff that is uh not actually
a reasonable way of charging you fees
for things you didn't ask for
then they will deny your request at
which point you will then request an
internal review of their denial of the
request at which point the agency even
though it's a totally different person
they will somehow manage to come to
exactly the same decision they had in
the first place surprise
so then you will go and ask the uh the
information commissioner to review the
decision that was made and then after a
year or so they'll might they might have
a look at it and then they might make a
decision
generally they will agree with you at
least in my case because i was right uh
and then at that point the agency will
appeal to the aat because they don't
like the decision the information
commissioner made uh and then if that
doesn't go very well then you'll end up
in the federal court uh if you haven't
already died of boredom or old age
you have to have a lot of patience
because all of this process tends to be
run by lawyers and lawyers get paid more
the longer everything takes
this has been the robodet saga for me on
the business case freedom of information
request i filed in january of 2017
as you can see it's little clusters of
stuff followed by lots of waiting
followed by more clusters of stuff
and that particular fi request turned
five yesterday so i bought it a cake um
it was quite tasty
happy birthday foi
so given that experience that i've had i
thought you might be interested in what
i have called shenanigans
this is what happens when the agencies
don't want to help you and unfortunately
there are lots of them
here are some of the ways in which
agencies try to be as unhelpful as
possible
first one is called too many documents
this is when your scope is too broad or
they interpret it as being too broad and
then give you a denial using the section
24 double a too hard
excuse
um they will deliberately often find way
too many documents or say that they're
actually massive and it takes forever
for us to read these things and figure
out whether we should tell it give it to
you or not
and then they use that in conjunction
with charging you money to try to make
you go away
sometimes they don't
sometimes but when they do
be aware that if you ask for the
information commissioner to review that
decision the ic
pretty much takes a year before they
allocate someone to start looking at any
of the review requests it's a major part
of why foi is broken because uh the oao
because the information commissioner has
been deliberately underfunded for many
years after successive governments have
attempted to kill it on purpose
so that's why it's happening
yes it sucks
join me in trying to do something about
it
as well as finding too many documents
some agencies don't find any at all
some of them manage to do both of these
things simultaneously which is
particularly interesting so they'll
start by saying oh you've asked for too
many documents you then narrow your
scope and then they say look at that now
it doesn't find any at all
finding the sweet spot of just enough
documents
that's tricky and takes a few goes
sometimes you will need to make more
than one foi request in order to get to
a scope that is actually achievable
you can file new foi requests while
you're waiting for the review of the
earlier ones to happen
which
might end up being a moot point but it's
probably worth running through that
process anyway
now sometimes they genuinely are no
documents to be found and that's okay
because the fact that there are known
documents sometimes is information
and if you can find out that no actually
we didn't conduct a privacy impact
assessment for this egregious privacy
invasive behavior that's information
that you can then use to further your
cause so
think about whether finding out that
there's nothing there is something that
you want to know
and based on that particular process
there
i here's a trick i learned from geordie
guy which i like to call the foi cascade
this is where you have an foi request
that i that doesn't succeed for one
reason or another
and then you do your various things
about oh we'll do the appeal but that's
going to take ages then you immediately
file a new foi request asking for the
correspondence about your original foi
request
correspondence often happens in email
email is documents so you can foi
request the correspondence about your
earlier foi request and you can keep
doing that
now this is personal information because
it's your foi request and its
correspondence about something in which
you're interested so the added bonus for
that is that foi requests about personal
information are free
speaking of free
many of these things aren't
one of the one of the reasons i really
like the federal fli system is that it's
free to make a request there's no filing
fee so in a lot of the state-based foi
acts you actually have to pay a fee just
to make the request which slows it down
and basically means if you can't afford
the filing fee you can't do fli
there is a certain amount of free bits
of foi but the agencies are allowed to
do a kind of cost recovery um there's
some rules about how they can charge you
money for stuff they can charge you for
two in two ways one is searching for the
information and one is processing it and
redacting stuff that shouldn't be
released um so they will attempt to
often charge you a whole bunch of money
about that often for spurious reasons i
have successfully challenged those fees
and gotten my money back uh but you will
probably need to pay the money and if
you can't afford the float um
crowdfunding is handy i've also done
that too i've crowdfunded the fees
um an important point paying the money
in order to keep the foi process going
doesn't mean that you've agreed
to paying the fees you can still
challenge paying it even though you've
you've agreed to pay it to keep your um
your request going so i have a decision
from the information commissioner
specifically about that i think it was
one of the first little bits of case law
i got into austria so you can look that
up and read that case for yourself
uh another form of shenanigans that i
have seen happen a bunch which i'm keen
to discourage is what i call the
preemptive section 22 claim now section
22 is a bit of the act that lets them
redact information which is irrelevant
so that means that you don't have to pay
processing fees for looking at say the
second half of the document which has
nothing to do with your request and
you're not interested in it so what they
can do is they can just cut that out or
blank it out and you're fine with that
and that doesn't take very much time to
do
what some sneaky agencies like to do
though is that they say in responding to
your request they'll say we assume that
you don't want any of the personal names
contact emails um personal phone numbers
or any any of the other things about any
of the people involved in this request
i challenge them on matter of principle
partly because they're not supposed to
do this the foi guidelines tell them not
to but they keep throwing it on as far
as i can work out the oic hasn't
actually gone over to them and told them
to knock it off
there's no penalty for them trying this
on either so of course they're going to
keep doing it that helps them keep
everyone secret and then you can't
figure out which particular executives
had decision-making power through the
process because they don't want to have
their fingerprints exposed now there are
some good reasons for why certain public
servants shouldn't be
shouldn't have their information exposed
in certain circumstances
but the onus is on them to explain that
so i say don't let them get away with
this section 22 claim if they want to
make an exemption claim
force them to do that they have to make
their case
last bit of shenanigans that i want to
talk about before we talk more about
those exemptions is what i call the last
minute question
so they love to do things at the very
last minute so there are statutory time
frames about you know if we start here
you have this long to respond before you
have to give me a decision they love to
bring it to you at the last possible
moment on the last possible day
on one occasion possibly two
i had an agency ask me a question
on the very last day i think they sent
it to me at like 9 00 p.m on the final
day of the of what was the consultation
period and because i wasn't sitting
there watching my my computer waiting
for their emails to come in i didn't
respond until the following morning it
was early the following morning but then
they said oh no you didn't respond
within the time frame so we've treated
your foi request as withdrawn
um that's nonsense
but some of them will try it on
um you may have picked up that there are
some systems design and incentives
problems here and yes
yes there are
now let's have a chat about exemptions
um they don't have to give you
everything
there are classes of information which
they are allowed to redact or simply say
no you can't have it
this is not unreasonable
how they use it can be unreasonable but
let's have a look at the basic
categories so that you have an
understanding of what they might try to
do so the two categories are
unconditional exemptions and conditional
exemptions so unconditional exemptions
these are ones where if they if the
document is covered by one of these
exemptions there's no public interest
test that it's just exempt
you don't get to argue the fact that
they should give it to you anyway
uh the unconditional exemptions within
the act are these ones um
let's i'm not going to go through them
in detail but i will point out the ones
that get used most in my experience and
that that's these ones cabinet documents
material obtained in confidence and
trade secrets
the cabinet documents one the current
government loves to use this one and in
fact they're trying to extend it to
cover basically everything the
government does which is nonsense but
fighting this is time consuming and
painful
so be on the lookout for that one the
other one is generally when you ask for
things that deal with government
dealing with private business so
particularly where they've outsourced a
function and you want to say look at a
contract about what did the contract say
you were supposed to deliver in exchange
for all of this money that apparently
disappeared into thin air
they will often claim that the materials
that they got from the company were
provided in confidence or contain
commercially valuable or trade secret
information and you can't have it
again
make them argue
make them make the case the onus is on
them
to explain that yes this material was
obtained in confidence and in order to
claim this exemption there's a whole
bunch of tests that they have to satisfy
make them do it
and then we have conditional exemptions
same sort of processes as the regular
exemptions but there's a public interest
test what that means is that even if
they can claim one of these conditional
exemptions you can still get the
information if the public interest in
disclosure outweighs
the interest in keeping it a secret
there's a whole bunch of tests for how
that works i'm not going to go into that
in great detail it's it's quite
complicated piece of piece of law um
weirdly the agencies basically never
think the public interest outweighs
their desire for secrecy
dunno
weird um these are the ones that are
available to them in the act
these are the ones that they tend to use
a lot
deliberative processes is where it's
their internal thinking processes or
when they're trying to figure out what
they should do
they want to keep that a secret because
it's they want to have the freedom to be
able to look at alternative options
without people freaking out about well
that's not a good idea but we wanted to
explore it and understand why it's not a
good idea again that's reasonable
however once the decision has been made
i would say we kind of want to know
what led to this terrible decision
we want to figure out what went wrong so
we can stop it happening again
uh certain operations of agencies and
personal privacy this is again this is
used to attend essentially keep things
secret um if you found out the way that
we did things you wouldn't like it and
we wouldn't be able to do it anymore
that is something that they try to cover
under certain operations of agencies i
say well
if we knew
and we told you to stop
that's a good thing
and we need this sort of information in
order to be able to inform how we vote
so i say
go at it make them justify the
exemptions
make a request
hopefully you've seen all of this stuff
and it's given you a basic primer for
what to expect i hope i haven't scared
you off by the unhappy path and that you
mostly deal with the happy path
but know that there's people that can
help you and
i learned how to do this stuff just by
doing it so
go make a request go go look at right to
know go and look at what other people
have done you don't need to log in in
order to just read what's already there
go and look at what has succeeded in the
past go and see what other people just
like you have done learn from what
they've done and then give it a go
yourself
just make a request pick a small one
something easy
and give it a try
join me in getting better funding for
the agencies responsible for oversight
of this um with more people using this
system and forcing change that's how
we'll actually make things improve
these shenanigans bits that needs to
stop
but i need your help to do it
and finally good luck um i hope you
don't really need the luck but i wish
you luck in the anyway and if you want
any help here's where you can find me
online on on twitter or just drop me an
email
i'll be more than happy to talk with you
and looks like we have a little bit of
time left at the end of the talk where
we can cover that as well and i'm more
than happy to do that
and uh here's credits for the images if
you want to go and find this sort of
stuff yourself these are all free stock
things but i like to give credit for the
things that i've used thank you to all
the people who took these photos and
allowed me to use them for free in my
silly little talk about foi
thanks very much
well thank you justin that was an
excellent uh overview of the
bureaucratic democratic process
and we do have sorry
though you're right i was just gonna say
yes democracy with australian
characteristics is what we have okay
we do have uh one question and a half
okay so the first question is has anyone
been able to obtain source code to sites
applications etc via foi
oh good question um has anyone ever i'm
not sure i know that people have
attempted to get source code for things
like vote counting stuff particularly in
the senate that's been unsuccessful um
i'm from memory they use the trade
secrets or commercially valuable
information exemption
um
like in theory yes
it is it is a document um i think the
only reason they haven't been able they
haven't been successful is because um
the exemptions have been claimed and i
believe upheld uh but i don't know
enough to to be able to confidently say
that it's never been successful um or
whether it actually has sorry
okay then and we also have one a low
priority question someone is observed uh
or probably jealous of the speakers you
have behind you and ask what speakers
are they
uh right
these ones back here okay so these are
from a very old car stereo system these
are alpine speakers from a
self-modification thing i did when i was
young and had way too much money from
one very generous tax return uh and way
too much free time and so i installed
these into my uh blue nissan bluebird
it was a 80s model something or other so
these came out of that car before i sold
it and got rid of it for scrap and
eventually i decided i should put
enclosures in these and turn them into a
stereo system
you can't see them but underneath my
feet are a couple of 10-inch subwoofers
okay and we have one
uh question just appeared or actually
two questions just appeared
have any political parties pledge to
providing more funding to the
o o-a-i-c
uh not that i'm aware of
if they have i would be very keen to
know about it
and i would encourage all of them to do
so
they all seem to claim that they enjoy
democracy
i would like them to put their money
where their mouth is
i don't really care what they say i care
what they do
and they can promise whatever they like
but until it actually happens i will be
highly skeptical
okay and we have a another one uh i feel
like we could crowdsource a lot of
things a list of things rather
uh people of lca might be keen on
finding more about from the government
and then get us uh
foi interested people to follow them
through is there anything out there like
that
uh well you it's that's just a priority
list really um
we all have our own so feel free to
create one um canvas people who are
interested absolutely organise
yourselves to do this i i thoroughly
support that idea
get involved
do it yourself if you have an idea you
don't have to wait for someone else to
give you permission go to right to know
and just do one
it's as you said cut and paste from mine
change a few bits of it hit go done
it's it is that easy um do all of them
yes and in the words of some other
presenters is probably an excellent
example of a community building exercise
absolutely i i have been uh amazed and
gratified at uh how many people have
been inspired by just me sharing what
i've been doing because it makes it more
interesting for me as part of my hobby i
feel less lonely doing it that way um
they've seen what i've done and a whole
bunch of people have said oh i i can do
that and picked it up and went and did
it themselves absolutely you can do this
and i encourage all of you to do it more
you will get better at it as you do more
of it but it's it's easy to get started
um and there are lots of people who
would be who'd be happy to help you um i
i'm happy to give people pointers as
much as i can i i my time isn't infinite
but i'm i'm more than happy to help
people and sort of steer them in the
right direction um i'm not a lawyer none
of what i
said is legal advice this is very much
an amateur hobbyist view of things but
um there's a rich history of of
documentation one great thing about the
law is that it's all written down so you
can go and read it um if you can read
source code you can read read the law
okay we have another question also uh
how much does the privacy acts apps get
in the way of foi when attempting to get
unredacted info
um not
heaps well it but it uh good consulting
answer it depends
um
generally if so the the privacy act is
mostly about keeping people's individual
privacy um
their private information private to
themselves
um government
uh people who work for government so
public servants doing their regular
public servant job as as the public
they have no inherent right to privacy
in the stuff that they're doing so
there's explicit stuff in in foi that
says look if you're going about your
regular job as a member of the public
service
you should assume that everything that
you're writing down is something which
is going to be made public
the fact that your name shows up in a
regular document that you just do as
part of your job like well that's just a
part of your job there's no inherent
privacy interest in that
um there have been some interesting
arguments made of late which i won't go
into huge detail there there's a
discussion paper and a whole decision uh
consultation process that oaic went
through quite recently that goes into
the issues of private information and
public servants and how should that be
disclosed um so not
or available provided information in
confidence
those are the areas where you might have
an intersection with the privacy act
okay i think we need to call time there
it's a
quarter past we did have one extra
question if you have a chance you can
have a look at it and
answer later happy too um i'll go and
hang out in the chat and uh and answer
some more questions there so
thank you again
thank you