These scripts are one operational component of foiathedead.org, a news site dedicated to documenting and analyzing the practices of government agencies through the lens of the information they collect on notable individuals.

To that end, the site collects information about recently deceased people of note from published obituaries, and sends automated requests for their files.

Currently this happens in a very limited way: obituaries are sourced only from the New York Times, files are only requested from the FBI, and some components are still manual. But it's a work in progress and will be expanding.

Note: Given the tie-in to foiathedead.org and the specific language in these requests, as well as the fact that I'm making a request from each new obit as it comes in, probably nobody else should be running these scripts as-is. I make them available here in case they're handy references or you want to see behind the scenes of the site.