It's a website that stores—and posts for the world to see—documents revealed through Freedom of Information requests across Canada.
These requests come from journalists and other watchdogs asking government agencies to release documents the agencies have previously declined to release.
If journalists win that fight, the documents eventually end up on the portal: https://foipop.ns.ca/about-the-review-office.
Now a Canadian teenager has been busted after downloading thousands of documents from the site.
But wait a minute, aren't these public documents?
Yes, except for the 250 documents the government forgot to redact before posting.
The Register has some thought-provoking coverage on the case. Who is to blame here?
The young adult in question denies any wrongdoing and insisted all he wanted to do was download public documents. "I just had no malicious intent and I shouldn't be charged for this," the teenager told Canadian telly news CBC this week. His supporters argued he could have had no idea there was sensitive personal information in that 7,000 document trove he grabbed in bulk.
The authorities, somewhat predictably, claim this was a deliberate attempt to swipe folks' private details. Which is exactly what we'd imagine you would allege if you were trying to deflect attention away from the fact someone on your staff bungled and put the wrong files on the public internet.
"There’s no question, this was not someone just playing around," Nova Scotia's Deputy Minister Jeff Conrad briefed journalists. "It was someone who was intentionally after information that was housed on the site."
Jeff, who isn't intentionally after information on a website when they visit it?
