SAULT STE. MARIE, ON – Local mother Helena Nowak has resorted to bureaucratic methods to try to obtain information regarding the love life of her son, Adam, 22, and has filed a Freedom of Information request in order to learn whatever she can in spite of her son’s insistence that he is, “waiting to see if it’s serious”.
“I’m his mother! I have a right to know if he’s seeing a nice girl or if she’s trouble, and he never answers his phone any more,” explained Helena at a press conference this morning. Mrs. Nowak spoke in front of an enlarged photo of her son with the arm of an unseen woman draped around his shoulders, one of very few Facebook photos available to those accessing only his limited profile.
In response to her request, Nowak received a heavily redacted file featuring printed versions of her son’s girlfriend’s social media posts. Any information leading to her name, appearance, account names, employment status, political affiliations or general opinions was blacked out. Only her posts regarding the weather or dogs were visible.
While traditionally employed to gain information on the activities of public bodies, more and more families are turning to Freedom of Information requests to try and learn family secrets, like why nobody ever talks about Aunt Ruth, where all the money from grandpa’s war bonds went, or what dad’s other family is like. Citizens who wish to file a Freedom of Information request regarding secret recipes are reminded that the missing ingredient is usually either love or alcohol.
“My mom can be a bit intense sometimes,” claims Adam Nowak. “If she knows too much about the girls I’m seeing it all gets way less chill and way too real.” He would not confirm what his girlfriend’s family does for a living or if she has tattoos.
Viri Sastry of the Ontario Ministry of Government and Consumer Services does not encourage people to use Freedom of Information requests in this way. “While the government does collect vast swaths of information on regular citizens all the time, we’d really rather people don’t think about that too much. Besides, people seem much more willing to share intimate details with large corporations, so this sort of request is probably best handled by the private sector, or some kind of rogue hacker mercenary.”
After being contacted to comment on this story, Adam’s girlfriend responded “Oh I would love to meet Adam’s mother! I didn’t even know she lived here!”