Email prankster tricks White House officials by Graham Cluley is ample evidence for why you should abandon FOIA requests in favor of phishing/hacking during the reign of Donald Trump.
People can and do obtain mountains of information using FOIA requests, but in the words of Parker Ray, “The Other Woman,”:
“Now I hate to have to cheat
But it feels better when I sneak”
In addition to feeling better, not using FOIA requests during the Trump regime results in:
- Access to competitor’s data deposited with the government
- Avoids the paperwork and delay of the FOIA process
- Bidding and contract data
- Develop long-term stealth access than spans presidencies
- Incompetence of staff gives broad and deep access across agencies
- Mine papers of extremely secretive prior presidents, like Obama
- Transparency when least expected and most inconvenient
If that sounds wishful, remember Cluley reports the “technique” used by the prankster was: 1) create an email account in the name of a White House staffer, 2) send an email from that account. This has to be a new low bar for “fake” emails.
Can you afford to be a goody two shoes?