The City of Charlottesville wants $18 (or more) per device to tell you what applications they have installed...






On Wednesday, March 13, 2019, I submitted a FOIA Request to the City of Charlottesville for a record of all applications currently installed on the mobile devices of 11 public servants. The request was denied because they claim that they cannot determine if I am eligible under law to make a request.







A proxy requester resubmitted the same request and was told that they would need to pay a $200 deposit before the request would be fulfilled. That breaks down to about $18 per device. The city actually claims that they have determined that it would cost more than $200 to "search for, access, assemble, duplicate and supply" the records.






Not content with taking them at their word, I checked for myself how time consuming it is to find the applications installed on iOS devices. Turns out, it takes literally like 5 seconds. 







The video above only shows how much time it takes to search for and access the records. They still have to "assemble, duplicate and supply" the records. Seeing as how each public servant would likely be accessing their own device to duplicate them, it is perplexing how the cost was estimated. 

So lets think this out. Each person searches their own device, which as we can see takes about 5 seconds per person. They each take a couple of screenshots of the screens of their devices, which again, takes seconds. They email those screenshots to the custodian of records. The custodian of records assembles all of the screenshots into a single email, or, drops all of the screens into a single folder on the city maintained Sharepoint drive and provides a single, clickable link to the requester. The custodian of records then emails the files or a link to the files to the requester. I'm no expert, but I don't really think that would cost $200 (or more). 

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