Want to See Your NSA or FBI File? Here's How...

[marble falls]

Have you ever Tweeted a politically subversive message, attended a protest, or signed an oppositional petition? If so, you may have a dedicated file on you kept by the FBI and/or the NSA.

With a simple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, any U.S. citizen can obtain one's NSA or FBI file, if such a file exists.

It simply takes a few minutes to fill out the requisite forms and mail them to the appropriate address. An independent site – www.getmyfbifile – will, free of charge, generate the necessary forms for you already filled out.

Of course, you can also do this directly through the NSA or FBI if you are worried about providing personal information to an independent site.

While an appropriate level of cynicism may be warranted concerning the level of transparency one should expect from such a request – should your file be substantial – it is the law that your complete file be provided to you upon request.

Demand that the law be followed, for it is your right as a citizen to know this information.

My request is going in the mail today.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/11/1215421/-Want-to-See-Your-NSA-or-FBI-File-Here-s-How?detail=email

My request is going out tomorrow.

[BlueStreak]

1. Of course, if you request a file, THAT will go into your file.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. Of course, if you don't already have a file with the FBI or the NSA,

making a FOIA request will probably get you one.

[marble falls]

3. As a former member of SDS and WU1, I've never had a flight where I wasn't...

searched since '72. Nothing like fear of vague threats to keep others from standing up.

[Warren Stupidity]

4. Your request can be denied on all sorts of grounds.

They can even decline to indicate if you do or do not have any information on file.

But go ahead.

[marble falls]

5. Denying the request would speak reams, wouldn't it?

[Warren Stupidity]

6. not really google Glomar.

(3) Glomar - Agencies can avoid a decision on the release of records if the fact of the existence of the records is in itself classifiable. In a FOIA case involving a request for records pertaining to the submarine retrieval ship the Glomar Explorer, an appeals court allowed the CIA to neither confirm nor deny the existence of the requested records. The "Glomar" response has been routinely invoked since if an agency wishes to withhold disclosing the existence or lack of existence of records.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/foia/guide.html

I believe ACLU has been routinely glomar'd in its attempts to get "standing" re the NSA's massive domestic surveillance operations. The Snowden documents have give them what FOIA didn't.

[marble falls]

7. I Google nothing. Try duckduckgo.com.

[caraher]

8. It's not clear that you can get NSA information this way

They generate a letter to the FBI and there are buttons to click for letters to the CIA, CID and a number of other agencies. But NSA is not on that list, and as far as I saw from the FBI letter there's no mention of NSA.

[Fuddnik]

9. Good luck.

I requested mine on getmyfbifile about 6 or 7 years ago. A year later I got a form letter saying that my request couldn't be processed without an original, hard-copy signature.

I downloaded the form again, signed it, and sent it certified mail. That's the last I heard.

I know I've got one.