Cases
NCLA v. FBI and Department of Justice
CASE SUMMARY
The New Civil Liberties Alliance urges the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to compel the FBI to disclose records concerning payments it has reportedly made to social media companies, media organizations, and other non-government entities. NCLA submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for these records in January 2023. NCLA would like to determine whether FBI paid X (formerly Twitter) and other platforms to modify their content moderation policies or algorithms—potentially aligning them with the government’s policy positions and views on topics like “misinformation” or “disinformation.” Rather than comply with NCLA’s request, FBI rejected it outright, informing NCLA that the agency had not conducted a search for a single requested document and refused to confirm or deny whether any of the records exist at all. Such payments, however, have been mentioned in the publicly released “Twitter Files,” internal company documents released by X CEO Elon Musk.
FBI’s refusal is not only legally insufficient—it also defies FOIA’s core purpose of transparency. To evade NCLA’s records request, FBI simply claimed it could “neither confirm nor deny the existence” of any records NCLA requested under 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(E), which exempts records “compiled for law enforcement purposes” that “would disclose techniques or procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions.” No further explanation was given. FBI has in no way shown that any of the requested materials fall under Exemption 7(E), nor has it shown how disclosure would pose a legitimate risk to law enforcement operations. FBI’s blanket refusal to search for—let alone produce—a single document leaves many key questions unanswered: Were the FBI reimbursements in question limited to payments for routine processing of subpoenas and targeted legal requests? Or did FBI fund social media companies to modify their platforms to align with preferred government narratives?