It is the law that lets any citizen demand to see the government's records. Passed in 1966, it rests on a radical premise: the people's business belongs to the people.
The Freedom of Information Act, known as FOIA, is a federal law that gives any person the right to request access to records held by federal agencies. The government must release them unless they fall under a specific, limited exemption.
Its premise reverses the old default. Instead of the government deciding what to reveal, FOIA presumes that records are public and puts the burden on the government to justify keeping anything secret. Transparency is the rule; secrecy must be defended.
It was signed into law in 1966, and strengthened after the Watergate scandal exposed how much governments hide. It has since been used by journalists, researchers, and ordinary citizens to uncover waste, abuse, and wrongdoing that officials would have preferred to bury.
It has real limits. Exemptions protect genuine national security, personal privacy, and some internal deliberations, and agencies can be slow, redact heavily, or resist. But the core right remains powerful: a citizen can simply ask to see what the government is doing, and the law says it must answer.
