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DC Circuit Orders FBI To Use Google
The D.C. Circuit today criticized the FBI for failing to use Google in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, which requires government agencies to release information unless "reasonable efforts" show that the information is not available to the public.The case involved a request for 35 year-old tapes recorded during a Lousiana mob investigation. The FBI claimed that they could refuse to release the tapes under an exception to FOIA which allows information to be withheld when it could "reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal property." According to the FBI, release of the tapes would invade the privacy of the persons taped. As the court explained, a person's interest in their own privacy is "diminished where the individual is deceased," and thus the FBI's right to refuse disclosure of the tapes hinged upon whether or not they made reasonable efforts to determine if the people on the tape were dead. The court found the FBI's efforts lacking: Why, in short, doesnt the FBI just Google the two names? Surely, in the Internet age, a reasonable alternative for finding out whether a prominent person is dead is to use Google (or any other search engine) to find a report of that persons death.10 Moreover, while finding a death notice for the second speaker -- the informant -- may be harder (assuming that he was not prominent), Googling also provides ready access to hundreds of websites collecting obituaries from all over the country, any one of which might resolve that speakers status as well. As Howard Bashman notes there's no word yet on whether the FBI has to use Wikipedia. Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-08-22 |
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