Case Detail
| Case Title | American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California v. Department of Justice | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| District | Northern District of California | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| City | San Francisco | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Case Number | 3:2013cv03127 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Filed | 2013-07-08 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Closed | 2015-07-13 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Judge | Magistrate Judge Maria-Elena James | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Plaintiff | American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Defendant | Department of Justice | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Documents | Docket Complaint Complaint attachment 1 Opinion/Order [38] FOIA Project Annotation: A federal court in California was ruled that EOUSA and the Criminal Division of the Justice Department properly withheld the bulk of several memos providing guidance on how government attorneys should approach the issue of court authorization to use location tracking technology in light of the Supreme Court's recent ruling in United States v. Jones under Exemption 5 (privileges). The memos were part of a response to a multi-part request from the ACLU of Northern California. The ACLU argued the memos constituted the working law of the agency on the subject of court authorization of the use of location tracking technology and were not protected by Exemption 5. But Magistrate Judge Maria-Elena James disagreed, noting that the memos instead "involve legal issues that will ultimately be decided by the Court, not the DOJ. . .DOJ's interpretation of recent case law affects only the strategies government lawyers will use to obtain permission from the court to use location tracking techniques by law enforcement officers in criminal prosecutions." She added that "they are not directives, not interpretations of any of the DOJ's regulations, and not part of a body of law promulgated by the DOJ. Rather, they present arguments and litigating positions that federal prosecutors may pursue on a case-by-case basis." James found that portions of the Criminal Division's USABook, a legal resource book and reference guide for federal prosecutors, did not qualify as work product. She noted that 'the general description of the materials as guidance, coupled with the templates for use in obtaining location tracking information or devices, strongly suggest that these documents function like an agency manual, providing instructions to prosecutors on how to obtain location tracking information." James rejected the government's argument that information about a more precise use of publicly known investigative techniques could be protected under Exemption 7(E) (investigative methods and techniques). She indicated that "to the extent that potential law violators can evade detection by the government's location tracking technologies, that risk already exists." Rejecting the government's claims, she observed that "the declarations here set forth only conclusory statements that the public is not aware of the specifics of how or when the techniques are used, but do not state that the techniques are not generally known to the public."
Opinion/Order [43]Issues: Exemption 7(E) - Unknown to public, Exemption 5 - Privileges - Deliberative process privilege - Predecisional, Exemption 5 - Privileges - Deliberative process privilege - Deliberative Opinion/Order [49] Opinion/Order [52] Opinion/Order [53] FOIA Project Annotation: A federal magistrate judge in California has ruled that templates used by DOJ attorneys to request cell site simulator warrants as part of investigations are protected by Exemption 5 (attorney work product privilege), but that the agency has not shown that other related records that do not qualify for the privilege are protected under Exemption 7(E) (investigative methods and techniques). The ACLU of Northern California requested the information and after EOUSA and the Criminal Division denied many of the records as attorney work product, the ACLU filed suit. The ACLU argued that in a previous decision pertaining to similar records, Magistrate Judge Maria-Elena James had found that the attorney work product privilege did not apply to many of the records. The government had appealed that decision to the Ninth Circuit, but both the ACLU and DOJ agreed to let James decide the current case even though the Ninth Circuit had not yet ruled on the earlier case. After reviewing the records in camera, James largely agreed with DOJ that the templates were protected as attorney work product. The ACLU argued that the agency was required to show that the templates were created for specific litigation. But James rejected that claim, noting that "the actual purpose of the documents is to obtain the sought-after information, but the ultimate goal of that information is to use it towards the prosecution of alleged criminals. In that prosecution, a criminal defendant may challenge the Government's evidence through a motion to suppress, which in turn may implicate a number of the same factual and legal issues addressed in these withheld documents. In this sense, the court cannot divorce the non-litigation purpose�"i.e., simply procuring court authorization to obtain the suspected evidence�"from the litigation purpose�"i.e., forming the support for the criminal case and developing arguments to protect against attempts to prevent the acquitted evidence's use." She observed that "the litigation purpose and concerns in the later adversarial setting permeate the document's non-litigation purpose." James rejected DOJ's claims that records that did not qualify as attorney work product were nonetheless protected under Exemption 7(E). Noting that the Ninth Circuit required disclosure of techniques that were publicly known, James pointed out that "even reviewing these documents in camera, the Court cannot say that they reveal more than what is generally available to the public or that they risk circumvention of the law such that the application of Exemption 7(E) is required." The agency had withheld a search warrant that had been sealed in another case. James observed that the existence of a sealing order did not serve to withhold a record unless the order's purpose was to prohibit any disclosure. Finding that the sealing order did not provide a basis for withholding the record, she indicated that "the Government's assertion that the court intended the documents to remain sealed is inconsistent with the Order that for intents and purposes allows the Government to decide when to unseal those documents."
Opinion/Order [56]Issues: Exemption 7(E) - Investigative methods or techniques, Exemption 5 - Privileges - Attorney work-product privilege compiled in anticipation of litigation FOIA Project Annotation: Resolving the remaining issues in a case brought by the ACLU of Northern California against the Justice Department for records concerning the use of mobile tracking technology known as a cell site simulator, a federal magistrate judge in California has ruled that an email from a DOJ attorney to another DOJ attorney concerning the use of agency equipment to obtain location information for a particular wireless device is not protected by Exemption 5 (privileges). Magistrate Judge Maria-Elena James first found the email did not qualify as attorney work product. She noted that "while it does very briefly describe what type of legal process might be necessary to use the technology at issue, the description does not rise to the level of revealing any mental impressions, conclusions, or theories related to a litigation purpose. As such, the Court cannot find that a litigation purpose permeates these documents." James rejected the agency's assertion of attorney-client privilege as well. She pointed out that "it is not clear how this document qualifies as legal advice. The email appears to merely contain two excerpts from other documents, without any indication about why the author of the email compiled the excerpts together and for what purpose. Neither the Court's in camera review nor the Government's supporting declarations demonstrate that this email was communicated between lawyer and client or that it contains legal advice." James had previously found that Exemption 5 applied to templates used in asking for search warrants. After reconsidering parts of that ruling, she found that forms used to identify an unknown phone number before a search warrant was requested were too far removed from the attorney work product to be considered subject to the privilege.
Opinion/Order [71]Issues: Exemption 5 - Privileges - Attorney work-product privilege compiled in anticipation of litigation, Exemption 5 - Privileges - Attorney-client privilege | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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