Leesburg seeks FOIA changes to curb apparent AI-driven data-mining and allow aggregation for billing
Town staff told council that multiple narrowly tailored FOIA requests in a short span appeared AI-generated and imposed staff burden; the council supported drafting requests for (1) certification that requesters are Virginia residents and not AI agents and (2) authority to aggregate similar requests for billing thresholds.
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Town staff described a recent influx of narrow FOIA requests that appeared to be generated programmatically and were submitted under different email addresses, collectively creating a heavy staff workload. The town attorney and staff said the intent of proposed legislative language is not to impede legitimate public requests or representatives, but to require a certification that the requester is a Commonwealth resident and that the request is not AI-generated when submitting FOIA requests in order to deter commercial data-mining.
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