Case Detail
| Case Title | Associated Press v. United States Department of Defense | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| District | Southern District of New York | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| City | Foley Square | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Case Number | 1:2005cv03941 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Filed | 2005-04-19 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Closed | 2006-02-23 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Judge | Judge Jed S. Rakoff | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Plaintiff | Associated Press | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Defendant | United States Department of Defense | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Documents | Docket Complaint Opinion/Order [22] FOIA Project Annotation: A federal court in New York has ruled that the Defense Department must prepare a one-page questionnaire to be distributed to detainees at Guantanamo Bay to ascertain if they are willing to have the transcripts of their tribunal hearings disclosed to the Associated Press. The Associated Press had requested copies of the transcripts, which have been held to determine the status of detainees at Guantanamo. So far, 520 had been classified as enemy combatants and 38 had been exonerated. The Defense Department claimed the transcripts were protected by Exemption 6 (invasion of privacy), telling the court that if "terrorist groups or other individuals abroad are displeased by something the detainee said to the Tribunal, [the Department of Defense] believes that this could put his family at serious risk of reprisals â€" including death or serious harm â€" at home. This risk also translates to the detainee himself when he is released from detention." The court noted that "the Government, in other words, seeks to act as a surrogate for the detainees and safeguard their identities for what it believes is their own good and the good of their families." The court then observed that "one might well wonder whether the detainees share the view that keeping their identities secret is in their own best interests. But â€" given that the detainees are in custody and therefore readily available â€" it is really not difficult to find out. Such information is, moreover, critical to an informed evaluation of the instant motion, which requires the Court to balance the perceived harm to the detainees' privacy interest against the public's right to know." The court indicated that "in order that the Court may be in an informed position to decide the pending motion, the Court directs the Department of Defense to ask the detainees in question whether they wish the redacted information relating to their identities to be released to the Associated Press or not." In a footnote, the court addressed the agency's concern about using this process in Exemption 6 cases generally. The court pointed out that "while the Government also expresses concern that utilizing such a procedure in ordinary Exemption 6 cases would be costly and difficult, that is precisely because such cases, unlike here, do not provide ready access to a captive audience. Where, as here, unusual circumstances permit ready determination of the views of the very persons whose privacy is sought to be protected, courts have utilized procedures not unlike the one here directed."
Opinion/Order [33]Issues: Exemption 6 - Invasion of privacy, Exemption 7(C) - Invasion of privacy concerning law enforcement records Opinion/Order [41] Opinion/Order [45] FOIA Project Annotation: Several recent court decisions have resulted in serious setbacks for the government's claims that records pertaining to detainees can be withheld under the Freedom of Information Act. Judge Alvin Hellerstein ruled recently that the government must disclose prisoner abuse photos taken at Abu Ghraib. Now, Judge Jed Rakoff has taken the wind out of the sails of the government's privacy claims for detainees at Guantanamo and has essentially told the Defense Department that it has utterly failed to justify withholding names of detainees who came before a military tribunal under Exemption 6 (invasion of privacy). The litigation before Rakoff was brought by the Associated Press after the Defense Department failed to respond to its November 2004 request for transcripts from the proceedings of the military tribunal at Guantanamo. The agency produced copies of the transcripts from which all names and identifying information had been redacted. The Defense Department indicated that identification of any of the detainees could cause them potential harm. In one of his earlier decisions in the case, Rakoff, skeptical of the agency's privacy claims, told the Defense Department to survey the detainees and find out if they objected to disclosure of personally identifying information. In a ruling dated January 4, Rakoff noted that the agency had polled 317 detainees. Of that number, 63 indicated they did not mind disclosure of their information, 17 objected, 35 returned the form without making a choice, and 202 declined to return the form at all. Reviewing these statistics, Rakoff pointed out that "the Department of Defense has failed to carry its burden. The only privacy interest it purports to assert under Exemption 6 is that of the detainees; but of the 317 detainees in issue, only 17 have asserted a desire to have their identifying information kept confidential. Moreover, so far as the record here discloses, none of the detainees �" not even these 17 �" had a reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to the identifying information they provided. Most of the information was provided by them in formal legal proceedings before a tribunal, and nothing in the record before the Court suggests that they were informed that the proceedings would remain confidential in any respect." The Defense Department argued that the detainees might face retaliation if their identities were revealed. Calling this a "derivative" harm, Rakoff indicated that "the Defense Department has failed to come forward on this motion with anything but thin and conclusory speculation to support its claims of possible retaliation. Even under the relaxed evidentiary standards that might arguably apply in these unusual circumstances, such a meager and unparticularized showing is inadequate to meet the standards of. . .FOIA." Rakoff elaborated further in a January 23 opinion responding to the Defense Department's request for reconsideration. In requesting reconsideration, the agency told Rakoff that he had "overlooked the alleged privacy interests of, and risks to, the detainees' families, friends, and associates." But Rakoff rejected the agency's request, pointing out that "a motion for reconsideration allows a party to bring to the Court's attention an argument the party had previously raised and the Court has overlooked; but it does not allow a party to use the guise of 'reconsideration' to raise what is effectively a new argument or one never meaningfully developed previously." While the agency did not contest that Rakoff had considered the fears detainees might have for the safety of their families and friends, it contended that "the Court overlooked its further argument that these third parties have themselves an important privacy interest in having the detainees' identifying information kept confidential." Rakoff noted that the only reference to third party privacy was in a footnote in the agency's memorandum in support of summary judgment which was too oblique to qualify as having argued separately for third party privacy. Procedural matters aside, Rakoff then indicated that the third party privacy claim would fail anyway because it "lacks substantive merit. If, as the Court held in its January 4 decision, the detainees had no reasonable expectation that the information they disclosed during the tribunal proceedings would be kept confidential, the third parties had even less of an expectation that the information disclosed by the detainees during the tribunal proceedings would be kept confidential." Rakoff then explored the reasons why there was no expectation of privacy under these circumstances. Saying that it was unfortunate that privacy was so ill-defined, he observed that "privacy is in effect defined, obliquely but usefully, as a zone (whether spatial, informational, or whatever) into which a reasonable person neither wishes nor expects outsiders to intrude. What is certain, however, is that, at least in the Fourth Amendment context, the zone of protectable privacy does not extend beyond situations in which a reasonable person would have an expectation of privacy." He then pointed out that "the Government has failed to adduce any competent evidence that the detainees, when they provided the identifying information at issue, had any reasonable expectation that the information would be kept confidential. Most of the information was given in sworn testimony at quasi-judicial hearings that were visibly being recorded by the equivalent of a court reporter. While the proceedings were closed to the general public, the press was present. . .Before each detainee testified, the 'Tribunal President' explained to the detainee the process, without suggesting in any way that any promise of confidentiality was being made with respect to the detainee's testimony. . .The notion, therefore, that the detainees, in voluntarily providing sworn recorded testimony to a quasi-judicial tribunal, nonetheless retained a reasonable expectation that their identifying information would remain confidential, is entirely without evidentiary support on this record. . ." Poking holes in the agency's argument, Rakoff explained that "the argument now advanced is, in effect, that even if the detainees themselves did not have a protectable privacy interest in the identifying information they voluntarily provided to the tribunals, their family, friends, and associates who were directly or indirectly implicated in such testimony did have such an interest. But any reasonable expectation of these third parties that the identifying information provided by the detainees would remain private is even more conjectural than that of the detainees themselves. It is theoretically possible, of course, that the family of a detainee may not want his, or their, names and whereabouts revealed because of fears of embarrassment or retaliation; but how can this be said to be a privacy interest, when they never had any reasonable expectation that the detainee and/or his captors would not reveal his and their names?" Rakoff added that, while the agency's claims "might be entitled to some deference if they dealt with issues of national security, their claims as to what embarrassment or fear of retaliation might be felt by the families and friends of detainees, and what those third parties' reasonable expectations of privacy might be, is not entitled to special deference, but, rather must be supported by at least a modicum of competent evidence."
Issues: Exemption 6 - Invasion of privacy | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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