Background.

The article presents a background on the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) enacted in 1966. Topics include the main provision of the FOIA which is to provide public access to federal government information, the nine statutory exemptions to this right to access such as when information is classified for national defense, or data exempted by a statute other than FOIA, and the OPEN FOIA Act of 2009, whose new policy is referred to as "the presumption of openness."