We’re independent journalists and researchers digging into local government and law enforcement.
Our recent work has exposed how police surveil and interfere with movements for social, racial, economic, and environmental justice.
We work with investigative journalists as well as individuals, organizations, and communities. We are particularly interested in issues affecting grassroots social movements. Our focus is on smaller cities, towns, and rural areas.
Records obtained by Information for Public Use have been featured in publications including The Lund Report, The Intercept, and The New Yorker. Visit our Media & Records page to see the impact of our work and access the records we’ve obtained.
Interested in collaborating? Contact us.
Support us
We’re all volunteer run, but public records are expensive! You can support our work by donating on Venmo @infofiend123 and write “info4publicuse” in the memo.
If you have a larger donation that requires 501c3 status, contact us at info4publicuse [at] protonmail.com.
About public records
The federal government and each U.S. state has a set of public records laws granting the public access to emails, phone logs, contracts, and other forms of work-based content. Public records show us how those in power are using – and often abusing – their power.
Public record laws are intended to create transparency, but the actual work of requests public records is time consuming and expensive. Furthermore, governments often delay, redact, and deny records requests, which can only be overcome through lengthy appeals processes.
Community groups, researchers and journalists use public records requests to obtain information like body camera footage showing police violence, discriminatory trends in arrest rates, under-the-radar contracts between corporations and government agencies, and surveillance of communities organizing for justice. Which is exactly what we’re here to do!
In the future, we will offer tutorials on how to submit your own public records requests. We recommend FOIA WIKI (for federal requests) and the RCFP Open Government Guide (for local and state requests).