Disruption of the FBI's FOIA Portal

Between a Saturday evening and Monday morning in July 2025, the FBI’s online Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request portal—a critical transparency tool for the public and researchers—experienced an unexpected disruption. Visitors attempting to use

By The UFO Chronicles 7-28-2015

the service encountered an error message and were unable to submit requests during this period. Reports from Expanding Frontiers Research (EFR) indicate that multiple independent researchers also observed and discussed the outage on social media platforms, highlighting community concern and the potential impact on public access to government information.

When EFR reached out to the FBI’s National Press Office to inquire about the cause and scope of the service gap, the agency initially responded that it was unaware of the issue and requested a link to the affected portal. By the time EFR had replied, the portal was back online. In a follow-up message, the FBI simply declined to comment on the circumstances surrounding the disruption, offering no details about the root cause, whether the incident was part of routine maintenance, a technical failure, or potentially something more serious.

This episode exemplifies recurring concerns around the FBI’s approach to FOIA accessibility. Over the past decade, the Bureau has moved away from more flexible channels like email submissions in favor of its online portal, despite criticism that these changes make it harder for the public to obtain government records. Past modifications to the portal have added restrictions such as daily submission caps, limited the types of requests accepted, and imposed character limits—although some of these limitations have been lifted following public outcry. Nevertheless, incidents like the recent outage reinforce criticisms that the FBI’s FOIA infrastructure is both fragile and resistant to meaningful transparency.

The Bureau’s refusal to clarify what happened—and its pattern of declining comment on technical or procedural problems—raises ongoing questions about accountability and openness at one of the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agencies. For transparency advocates, researchers, and journalists, the silence surrounding unexpected FOIA system outages punctuates a broader frustration: while access to public records is a legal right, practical barriers and lack of meaningful agency communication too often leave the public in the dark.

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See Also:

	EFR Announces Online UFO Archive
	Mind Control Files Included in FOIA Response
	The CIA’s Actual Involvement with UFOs: The Agency’s Public Statements are Deliberately Deceptive

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