In February 2024, the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.) filed a public records request with the NYPD to understand how they use surveillance technologies in connection with protests regarding Palestine and Israel.
Fourteen months, several extensions, and one appeal later, NYPD has yet to produce a single responsive record. In that time, people speaking out in support of Palestine have been abducted off the street, handed over to ICE, and subjected to sweeping surveillance for exercising their First Amendment rights.
The public still has no clear answers about how protesters are being surveilled, identified, and targeted — in large part because Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests like S.T.O.P.’s are endlessly stalled or ignored, part of a pattern of secrecy that keeps the public in the dark while lives are upended and abuses go unchecked.
Far from being the exception, this cycle is the norm: long delays, vague responses, and a never-ending stream of extensions. S.T.O.P. has 14 FOIL requests that have been pending for more than six months with the NYPD alone. Publicly available records paint a similarly dark picture of bureaucratic inefficiency and stalling tactics.
NYPD, for example, takes an average of 134 days to respond to FOIL requests. The Department of Correction is even slower, averaging 177 days, while the mayor’s office takes an astonishing 375 days on average to respond. State agencies don’t perform much better: the governor’s office requires 162 days, the Department of Labor takes 194, and the State Police lag behind with a response time of 263 days.
There can be no accountability or public trust in the government when people are left waiting for a year for basic information about how the government operates. From tenants discovering code violations in their buildings, to community members asking how police are using surveillance technology, to the press exposing official misconduct and corruption, New Yorkers deserve timely access to information that directly impacts their lives.
Uncovering government info often begins with a FOIL request. When that process breaks down, so does the public’s ability to know what their government is doing in their name.
New York’s Freedom of Information Law was supposed to be a cornerstone of democratic accountability. But the law, as it currently stands, fails to uphold its most basic promise. Instead of facilitating access to public records, it allows agencies to stall requests for months or years with no real consequences. In practice, FOIL has been warped into a mechanism for agencies to avoid scrutiny rather than embrace it.
Currently, agencies are required to acknowledge a FOIL request within five days — but after initial acknowledgement, agencies are only required to grant or deny the request within “a reasonable timeframe.” This vague timeline has created a loophole that agencies regularly exploit to delay responding to requests indefinitely.
Agencies routinely issue 90-day extensions with little justification and often miss their own deadlines without notice. And when responses do come, they’re often incomplete, requiring yet more follow-up and extending the cycle of evasion. Agencies are effectively weaponizing delay tactics to ensure that the records, if or when they are finally released, are too late to be useful or relevant. The result is a FOIL process that centers on delay, denial, and deflection rather than genuine transparency.
The FOIL Timeline Act (A.3425) is an urgently needed reform to the FOIL process. This proposed legislation would establish clear, enforceable deadlines for agencies to follow. Agencies would have 30 days after receipt of the request to determine whether to grant or deny it, and an additional 30 days to produce the records if granted. Missing a deadline triggers a “constructive denial,” meaning that a requester is eligible to appeal and then sue to get the documents, rather than sit in purgatory indefinitely.
The FOIL Timeline Act would transform FOIL from a black hole into a meaningful tool for public accountability. It would create an actual timeline and actual consequences for failing to comply with that timeline, rather than the current indefinite limbo that leaves journalists, advocates, and the public in the dark.
Democracy depends on transparency. When we can’t see how our government operates — especially law enforcement agencies engaged in mass surveillance of the public — we lose the ability to hold them accountable.
FOIL is a critical tool in keeping the public aware of how taxpayer dollars are spent and whether public officials are acting in our best interests. But without real deadlines and accountability, FOIL will remain a broken promise.
The FOIL Timeline Act is a necessary step toward restoring trust, transparency, and democracy in New York.
Abramson is a civil rights intern at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.)