Gang related gun crime in western sydney 2005

x made this Freedom of Information request to Australian Security Intelligence Organisation
This authority is not subject to FOI law, so is not legally obliged to respond (details).


This request has been closed to new correspondence from the public body. Contact us if you think it ought be re-opened.

The request was refused by Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.

Number of gang related gun crime in western Sydney 2005

ASIO.BLU, Australian Security Intelligence Organisation

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Thank you for your email requesting information regarding Freedom of Information requests. Please note that ASIO is an exempt agency under subsection 7(1) of the FOI Act and it is therefore not possible to access any ASIO records under this legislation.

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ASIO BLU

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Locutus Sum left an annotation ()

This request is half-cooked. "Number of gang related gun crime in western Sydney 2005" is not a sentence (!) or an FOI request even if a person broke his brains with imagination. It is also a strange request because the applicant has deleted useful information that the Right to Know website had automatically included ... like "Dear FOI Officer" (or something similar. Is the piece-of-sentence a statement that the number of gang-related crimes in Western Sydney, Australia is 2005, or is it a statement about a postcode area (2005) or is it very short way of saying:
Dear FOI Officer, Please provide me about the number of gang-related crimes in Western Sydney since the beginning of the year 2005, Yours faithfully xyz".

In any case, the request will be refused on any of several grounds. To begin, it is not a valid request because it is not a request for a document. Next, even if it were a request for a document, it would be a request for a document of the Australia Security and Intelligence Organisation, and documents of that agency are exempt under s 7 ("Exemption of certain persons and bodies"), subsection 1 of which says The bodies specified in Division 1 of Part I of Schedule 2, and a person holding and performing the duties of an office specified in that Division, are to be deemed not to be prescribed authorities for the purposes of this Act", and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation is listed in the schedule. A third reason is that documents of the ASIO are exempt even when an ASIO document is in the possession of an agency that is not listed in Schedule 2. This is because of the operation of s 7(2A):
(2A) An agency is exempt from the operation of this Act in relation to the following documents: (a) a document (an intelligence agency document) that has originated with, or has been received from, any of the following: ... (ii) the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.

I do not think that it is worthwhile to write the request correctly because ASIO will refuse it no matter well it is written. However, if it were a request for example to the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission or to the police force in New South Wales, then it would be better to write in complete english sentences and to say exactly what document is being requested.