Freedom Of Information Act (United States)
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a federal freedom of information law that allows for the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased information and documents controlled by the United States government. The Act defines agency records subject to disclosure, outlines mandatory disclosure procedures and grants nine exemptions to the statute. It was originally signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, despite his misgivings, on July 4, 1966 as 5 U.S.C. § 552 and went into effect the following year.
The Federal Government's Freedom of Information Act should not be confused with the different and varying Freedom of Information Acts passed by the individual states. Many of those state acts may be similar but not identical provisions to the Federal.
Read more about Freedom Of Information Act (United States): Background, Scope, Notable Cases
Famous quotes containing the words freedom, information and/or act:
“If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“Information networks straddle the world. Nothing remains concealed. But the sheer volume of information dissolves the information. We are unable to take it all in.”
—Günther Grass (b. 1927)
“It would be one of the greatest triumphs of humanity, one of the most tangible liberations from the constraints of nature to which mankind is subject, if we could succeed in raising the responsible act of procreating children to the level of a deliberate and intentional activity and in freeing it from its entanglement with the necessary satisfaction of a natural need.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)