Request 001 + 002 - 1/2/2026

One of my first FOIAs, revisited, plus a request inspired by a raunchy DMV video

Welcome to foiaday! It’s Friday, January 2nd, and so far, I’ve requested two documents. I’ve gotten back a grand total of… nothing. Yet.

Way back when, in March 2020, I was a journalism student at DePaul University fresh off my investigative reporting class. I'm pretty sure that Chris Bury, my professor, pushed us to file some FOIAs way earlier in the quarter, and I had no idea really where to start.

So I started doing digging on stories written using FOIA. I came across a fabulous story from Matt Novak at Gizmodo from a while back about a request for digital media that astronauts can watch while aboard the International Space Station. It revealed some stunning choices, like being able to watch Madagascar 2 but not Madagascar.

(They re-upped it in 2024, which netted some pretty solid new options for our men and women in space. For example, season 2 of Succession!)

It ended up being the thing that got me out of my shell. And lo and behold, two months later, I had a 22 page document returned in my inbox, with everything available on the ISS at that point in time.

Yesterday, I requested the same document from NASA, to kick off this year of requests. If you want to read the full 22 pages of what I got back in 2020, I've uploaded it to DocumentCloud here.

If you want to request it yourself, here’s the language I used to request the document:

A current (1/1/2026) list of all media aboard or authorized to be aboard the International Space Station, including movies, television, books, music and other digital media. 

A previous version of this request was fulfilled on 5/7/2020. Please provide the records in a digital format, like a .pdf, if possible. Thank you in advance for your assistance with this request!

Today, I’ve requested something interesting from the Illinois Secretary of State's office: rejected vanity plate applications. This isn't a new type of story, either — the LA Times did a great story on fun vanity plates a few years ago — but I'm eager to get the records back.

In December, Alexi Giannoulias, the Illinois Secretary of State, posted a video reading out a small selection of the 550-odd rejected vanity plate applications sent in by Illinois drivers in 2025. It included such prolific plates like PRIUSSY, ICUP, TYPESHT and, my favorite, IBPOOPIN.

In past years, they've put out press releases; the video and press releases, though, only highlight a PG-13 selection, so to speak, of the hundreds of rejected plates.

I want (need???) the full list. So today, I requested for the list for the past five years, to see just how creative drivers have gotten.

If you want to request this yourself, or something similar, here’s the language I used to request the document:

This is a records request pursuant to the Illinois Freedom of Information Act. I'm requesting copies of all rejected vanity plate applications from 2020 until present (2025). Please provide the records in a digital format, like a .pdf or .xls, if possible. 

As a heads up: I’m requesting these as a noncommercial request and as a member of the news media. In Illinois, this means that I’m able to request a fee waiver, which might vary for you depending on what kind of requester you are or what state you’re in.

This will get more filled out as we get farther along with this project, but here are the stats and deets of the things I’ve filed so far:

_{^*a slug is a journalism term for a nickname or shorthand to describe something like a story (or, in this case, a request!)}

I’m excited to jump into more requests this coming week. As far as email updates go, I'll send a weekly wrap-up on Mondays of the previous week of requests, and a monthly wrap-up on the last day of the month with a summary of what I've filed and what I've gotten back.

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.

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 happy new year!

Cam

P.S. — sorry this email went out so late! It seems like there were some server issues. Future emails won’t be just for the night owls! :-)