Astral Codex Ten

Freedom of Information Act

4 min read

Freedom of Information Act

Article

Freedom of Information Act is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between June 23, 2023 and February 07, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “The Freedom of Information Act—championed by Nader, and hailed as an unprecedented mechanism for government transparency when it was passed in 1966”; “thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, the public was close to accessing the details”; “a lot of data is only shared via costly and inefficient Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests”. It most often appears alongside civil rights movement, Congress, FDA.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: June 23, 2023
  • Last seen: February 07, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Your Book Review: Public Citizens
June 23, 2023 · Original source
Today, business groups dominate agency notice and comment periods, submitting almost ten time as many comments as public interest groups or individual citizens13. Industry submits over 80% of all comments to the EPA. And the Freedom of Information Act—championed by Nader, and hailed as an unprecedented mechanism for government transparency when it was passed in 1966—is today mostly used by businesses for profit-making purposes14. Among the many projects blocked or delayed by lawsuit activism—or the excessive legal review designed to preempt it—are public transit in Hawaii, wind farms on Cape Cod and upstate New York, and NYC congestion pricing, not to mention the millions of new homes around the country we should be building but aren’t.
Inline links: submitting almost ten time as many comments, 13, over 80%, mostly used, 14, public transit in Hawaii, Cape Cod, upstate New York, NYC congestion pricing
Including my own—my former startup occasionally used FOIA exactly like this.
Your Book Review: Safe Enough?
July 01, 2023 · Original source
By the early 1970s, after the civil rights movement and Vietnam and with Watergate in full swing, the public was becoming jaded with Big People waving away concerns with Big Promises on the basis of little more than self-proclaimed expertise. And thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, the public was close to accessing the details of what industry leaders actually knew. Big People recognized that this would not be an entirely good look.
1DaySooner's Trump II Health Policy Proposals
February 07, 2025 · Original source
Improve FDA Transparency: The FDA sits on the world’s biggest repository of clinical data, yet its transparency policies remain conservative compared to other global regulators. This opacity slows research, because a lot of data is only shared via costly and inefficient Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. For example, the European Medical Association makes public Complete Response Letters (CRLs), which detail critical safety and efficacy findings, but the FDA only shares them with the drug developer. An impactful focus for Makary could be addressing the practical and legal challenges that hinder real transparency reform at the FDA. Here’s a very 2025 solution - train an LLM on the agency’s vast repository of clinical data and deploy it as a tool for reviewers and potential automated researcher itself. By automating institutional knowledge, an AI system could significantly reduce regulatory burden by helping FDA staff review submissions, spot issues, predict outcomes, and write responses.
Inline links: compared, costly and inefficient, makes public, Complete Response Letters