U.S. Department
of Justice
Elec. Privacy Info. Ctr. v. DHS, No. 11-2261 (JDB), 2013 WL 781716 (D.D.C. Mar. 4, 2013) (Bates, J.)
Date
Re: Request for records concerning social media monitoring initiatives
Disposition: Granting in part and denying in part defendant's motion for summary judgment
- Segregability: The court finds that the agency has met its disclosure obligations for one document. The defendant "has already disclosed all of the nonexempt information in the document – the company name, Cyveillance; the date of the presentation, January 2010; and the presentation's title, 'United States Secret Service, Cyveillance Overview.'" For the remaining documents, the court concludes that "DHS has not shown that [these documents] are properly withheld in full." The Secret Service [to whom the records were referred] "admits that some portions of the documents, 'such as street address, order number, and similar basic information, general sentences or sentence fragments, and standardized contract language,' could be released." The defendant argues that "such information is 'not reasonably segregable' because it has 'minimal or no informational content related or responsive to Plaintiff's FOIA request, either separately or taken together.'" The court disagrees, finding that the information "has meaning" and that there is no concern here with committing "significant time and resources" to the effort of segregation. The court concludes that, "[a]n agency may not withhold segregable, nonexempt portions of a document just because those portions may be less than helpful to the person on entity requesting the document."
Court Decision Topic(s)
District Court opinions
Segregability
Updated August 6, 2014