SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE; TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
(a) SHORT TITLE.—This Act may be cited as the 
‘‘Freedom of Information Act Amendments of 2007’’. 
(b) TABLE OF CONTENTS.—The table of contents for 
this Act is as follows:
Sec. 1. Short title; table of contents. 
Sec. 2. Findings. 
Sec. 3. Protection of fee status for news media. 
Sec. 4. Recovery of attorney fees and litigation costs. 
Sec. 5. Disciplinary actions for arbitrary and capricious rejections of requests. 
Sec. 6. Time limits for agencies to act on requests. 
Sec. 7. Individualized tracking numbers for requests and status information. 
Sec. 8. Specific citations in exemptions. 
Sec. 9. Reporting requirements. 
Sec. 10. Openness of agency records maintained by a private entity. 
Sec. 11. Office of Government Information Services. 
Sec. 12. Accessibility of critical infrastructure information. 
Sec. 13. Report on personnel policies related to FOIA. 
Sec. 14. Promotion of public disclosure. 
Sec. 15. Requirement to describe exemptions authorizing deletions of material 
provided under FOIA.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
Congress finds that—
(1) the Freedom of Information Act was signed 
into law on July 4, 1966, because the American peo-
ple believe that—
(A) our constitutional democracy, our sys-
tem of self-government, and our commitment to 
popular sovereignty depends upon the consent 
of the governed; 
(B) such consent is not meaningful unless 
it is informed consent; and 
(C) as Justice Black noted in his concur-
ring opinion in Barr v. Matteo (360 U.S. 564
(1959)), ‘‘The effective functioning of a free 
government like ours depends largely on the 
force of an informed public opinion. This calls 
for the widest possible understanding of the 
quality of government service rendered by all 
elective or appointed public officials or employ-
ees.’’; 
(2) the American people firmly believe that our 
system of government must itself be governed by a 
presumption of openness; 
(3) the Freedom of Information Act establishes 
a ‘‘strong presumption in favor of disclosure’’ as 
noted by the United States Supreme Court in 
United States Department of State v. Ray (502 U.S. 
164 (1991)), a presumption that applies to all agen-
cies governed by that Act; 
(4) ‘‘disclosure, not secrecy, is the dominant ob-
jective of the Act,’’ as noted by the United States 
Supreme Court in Department of Air Force v. Rose 
(425 U.S. 352 (1976)); 
(5) in practice, the Freedom of Information Act 
has not always lived up to the ideals of that Act; and 
(6) Congress should regularly review section 
552 of title 5, United States Code (commonly re-
ferred to as the Freedom of Information Act), in
order to determine whether further changes and im-
provements are necessary to ensure that the Govern-
ment remains open and accessible to the American 
people and is always based not upon the ‘‘need to 
know’’ but upon the fundamental ‘‘right to know’’. 
SEC. 3. PROTECTION OF FEE STATUS FOR NEWS MEDIA. 
Section 552(a)(4)(A)(ii) of title 5, United States 
Code, is amended by adding at the end the following: 
‘‘In making a determination of a representative of the 
news media under subclause (II), an agency may not deny 
that status solely on the basis of the absence of institu-
tional associations of the requester, but shall consider the 
prior publication history of the requester. Prior publica-
tion history shall include books, magazine and newspaper 
articles, newsletters, television and radio broadcasts, and 
Internet publications. If the requestor has no prior publi-
cation history or current affiliation, the agency shall con-
sider the requestor’s stated intent at the time the request 
is made to distribute information to a reasonably broad 
audience.’’. 
SEC. 4. RECOVERY OF ATTORNEY FEES AND LITIGATION 
COSTS. 
(a) IN GENERAL.—Section 552(a)(4)(E) of title 5, 
United State Code, is amended by adding at the end the 
following: ‘‘For purposes of this section only, a complain-