Request 003 — 1/3/2026

What do you get when you mix a chatbot with policing?

Happy weekend, and welcome to foiaday! It’s Saturday, January 3rd, though I think we’re still solidly in holiday-void-time, so it doesn’t feel like much of a distinct day at all.

So far, I’ve requested three documents. I — surprise! — haven’t gotten anything back. The soonest I’m likely to get something in is probably next Thursday, though we’ll see. (I have low expectations for the NASA FOIA coming back any time sooner than March, just because it’s federal.)

If you’ve been following along, last night’s dispatch outlined two requests I’ve filed already this year. Today, I sent over an email to the Chicago Police Department, the Illinois State Police, and the Cook County Sheriff’s Office, for something that I’ve chatted with folks about through MuckRock: ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot logs.

In September, I hosted a FOIAFriday session alongside KNKX and Cascade PBS reporter Nate Sanford about reporting he had done on ChatGPT usage in some municipal government bodies in Washington. I remember seeing the story shared in the News Nerdery Slack, and how it took off like wildfire. 

Since that FOIAFriday chat, I’ve been thinking about the ChatGPT log requests and other places to try and ask for them from. In his reporting, Nate mentioned how some municipal police departments were using chatbots for some of their work — ChatGPT is notoriously not secure, so it’s been rattling around in my head. 

While I have a deep, deep urge to batch request logs from every police department in the state — maybe I will, maybe later this year — I made the executive decision to only pick three. ISP, CPD and CCSO will all be good litmus tests for chatbot usage, considering they have a large number of employees, like administrative employees, not just officers.

Nate also did a great interview with Alex Mahadevan in Poynter about some of the specific wording that you can use if you want to request logs yourself. I pulled from the request language that Nate used, and tweaked it a little to accommodate Copilot and some other parameters. 

Here’s the language I used to request the document:

Chat histories of all ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot sessions conducted by employees on employer-owned devices or used in job-related functions. The timeframe for this request is 1/1/2024 to present (1/3/2026) or the date this request is processed. 

If it’s helpful, please share with respondents the following instructions for exporting ChatGPT histories:
- Click on your name or profile icon (bottom-left corner of the ChatGPT interface).
- Select ”Settings”.
- Go to the ”Data Controls” tab.
- Click ”Export data”. A pop-up will appear — click ”Confirm export”.
- OpenAI will email you a download link with a `.zip` file containing your chat history in JSON format (and HTML for easy viewing).

And the following information for exporting Microsoft Copilot chats:https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/export-teams-content-copilot 

Please release information in a digitized format, like a .pdf, if at all possible. 

So. In summary, here are the stats and deets for my requests so far and what’s currently awaiting a reply:

As you’ve definitely noticed, I am still filing requests even though it isn’t a business day. I think my goal this year will be to keep it consistent even if it’s a holiday or weekend, though that might change. 

Knowing that it’s a weekend, the FOIA won’t be (required to be) acknowledged or processed until Monday at the earliest. For the uninitiated, in Illinois, agencies have five days from the filing of a FOIA to provide an acknowledgement of the request. 

My guess is that I’ll get a couple automatic extensions thrown in for these requests in order to accommodate the search. I might have to narrow them down, too. Either way, I’ll keep y’all updated!

If there's a coworker or friend you think would benefit from this newsletter, feel free to forward it to them! If they subscribe, they'll also get a link to a template for the tracker I like to use to keep tabs on requests I've filed.

As a reminder, next week, I'll share a link to a request or ideas form, if you're interested in helping me out along the way or passing on interesting pieces of reporting or research that uses FOIA. In the meantime, if you have any questions, comments, love letters or conspiracy theories, feel free to drop me a line by replying to this email. 

Happy filing, and have a good weekend!

Cam