When an FOI request results in more than you expected

The Wall Street Journal received a Federal Trade Commission report that is critical of Google’s dominance in Internet search from a Freedom of Information Act request.

One problem: The document, in its unredacted form, was not supposed to be released as part of the FOI request.

Brody Mullins, Rolfe Winkler and Brent Kendall of The Journal write, “The Wall Street Journal viewed portions of the document after the agency inadvertently disclosed it as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. The FTC declined to release the undisclosed pages and asked the Journal to return the document, which it declined to do.

“‘Unfortunately, an unredacted version of this material was inadvertently released in response to a FOIA request,’ an FTC spokesman said in a statement to the Journal. ‘We are taking steps to ensure this does not happen again,’ the statement said.

“Embedded in the document and in detailed footnotes are an array of previously unknown details about Google’s business, many of which come from senior officials such as Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, former executive Marissa Mayer and co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.”

Read more here.