Right to Know: A Beginner’s Guide to State Secrecy

Vuk Jankovic first got hooked when he was a law student at the University of Montenegro in Podgorica. But instead of tobacco, booze or narcotics, his addiction involves pestering state institutions for information.

The best part is — they are legally required to answer him.

Under right-to-know legislation introduced in Montenegro in 2005, public bodies have 15 days to respond to demands for data or documents on everything from budget spending and government tenders to the management of public property and the machinations behind privatisations.

Anyone can do it, though aficionados say crafting a killer request is an exercise in precision. Make it too vague, and institutions will dodge the question or clog up your inbox with useless attachments.

"Access-to-information is often an extremely exhaustive and time-consuming process, especially when authorities are silent and avoid responding to requests," Jankovic, an anti-corruption activist, told the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN.

Welcome to the world of FOIA.

Right-to-know champions use the acronym to refer to the Freedom of Information Act, the big gun in their arsenal for holding power to account. They even employ it as a verb; "to FOIA" means to send a formal request under the terms of the act.

FOIA requests have put politicians in the dock. They led to the ongoing trials of former Podgorica Mayor Miomir Mugosa and former Bar Mayor Zarko Pavicevic, who both plead not guilty to charges of abuse of office. FOIA helped expose and convict Svetozar Marovic, ex-president of the now-defunct unified state of Serbia and Montenegro, as the kingpin of a criminal group.

In law school, Jankovic FOIA'd courts for data for his thesis on the legalities of loan...