FOIA requests received by federal agencies

As more data breaches have been reported in the United States, more Freedom of Information Act requests have been filed with federal agencies, a correlation that suggests either that Americans who have had their data stolen are now deeply curious about what the government knows, or that both metrics are simply measuring the same thing: a nation that is simultaneously losing control of its information and demanding more of it. The coefficient is 0.935 across nine years, during which both trends climbed with the anxious energy of a society that wants transparency and keeps failing to achieve security.

Data breaches grew from about 780 reported incidents in 2015 to over 3,200 by 2023, driven by the expansion of digital infrastructure, ransomware gangs, and the sheer volume of personal data stored in databases that were designed for convenience rather than security. FOIA requests grew from about 713,000 to over 928,000 during the same period, pushed by increased civic engagement, journalism investigations, and the proliferation of FOIA request tools that made filing as easy as filling out a web form. Both trends reflect a digital society producing and demanding more information at the same time: more data exists to be breached, and more tools exist to request government records. The shared variable is digital literacy and the expanding surface area of information in public life.

Nine years of data breaches and FOIA requests growing together is a portrait of a society engaged in a contradictory project: demanding that its government be more transparent while watching its private data become less secure. Both trends will continue because both are powered by the same infrastructure. The information wants to be free, and apparently, it is succeeding from both directions.