Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-10-05167/USCOURTS-caDC-10-05167-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
American Civil Liberties Union
Appellee
American Civil Liberties Union Foundation
Appellee
United States Department of Justice
Appellant

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued February 8, 2011 Decided September 6, 2011

No. 10-5159

AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION AND AMERICAN CIVIL

LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION,

APPELLANTS/CROSS-APPELLEE

v.

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE,

APPELLEE/CROSS-APPELLANTS

Consolidated with 10-5167

Appeals from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:08-cv-01157)

Catherine Crump argued the cause for appellants/crossappellee. With her on the briefs were Arthur B. Spitzer and

David L. Sobel. 

John S. Koppel, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice,

argued the cause for appellee/cross-appellants. With him on the

briefs were Ronald C. Machen Jr., U.S. Attorney, and Leonard

Schaitman, Attorney. R. Craig Lawrence, Assistant U.S.

Attorney, entered an appearance.

USCA Case #10-5167 Document #1327674 Filed: 09/06/2011 Page 1 of 35
2

Before: GINSBURG and GARLAND, Circuit Judges, and

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge GARLAND.

GARLAND,Circuit Judge: The plaintiffs brought this action

against the Department of Justice under the Freedom of

Information Act, seeking to obtain documents relating to the

government’s use of cell phone location data in criminal

prosecutions. The district court directed the release of certain

specified documents and upheld the Department’s decision to

withhold others. We affirm the court’s order requiring the

release of the specified documents. Because there are too many

factual uncertainties regarding the remaining documents, we

vacate the balance of the court’s decision and remand the case

for further development of the record.

I

Cell phones generate several types of data that can be used

to track their users’ past or present locations with various

degrees of precision.1

 Concerned by reports that federal law

1

For descriptions of the different kinds of data available, see In

re Application of U.S. for an Order Directing Provider of Elec.

Commc’n Serv. to Disclose Records to Gov’t, 534 F. Supp. 2d 585,

589-90 (W.D. Pa. 2008), vacated, 620 F.3d 304 (3d Cir. 2010); Kevin

McLaughlin, Note, The Fourth Amendment and Cell Phone Location

Tracking: Where Are We?, 29 HASTINGS COMM.&ENT.L.J.421, 426-

27 (Spring 2007); Recent Development, Who Knows Where You’ve

Been? Privacy Concerns Regarding the Use of Cellular Phones as

Personal Locators, 18 HARV. J.L. & TECH. 307, 308-10 (Fall 2004);

Orin Kerr, Reader Poll: Do You Know How Cell Phones Work?, THE

VOLOKH CONSPIRACY (Nov. 8, 2010, 1:08 PM), http://volokh.com/

2010/11/08/. 

USCA Case #10-5167 Document #1327674 Filed: 09/06/2011 Page 2 of 35
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enforcement agencies were obtaining these data from

telecommunications companies without a judicial determination

of probable cause,2 the American Civil Liberties Union and the

American Civil Liberties Union Foundation (ACLU) filed

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the Drug

Enforcement Administration and the Executive Office for

United States Attorneys, seeking information relating to the use

of warrantless cell phone tracking by certain U.S. Attorneys’

Offices. As is relevant to this appeal, the plaintiffs requested

records relating to:

[1] The case name, docket number, and court of all

criminal prosecutions, current or past, of individuals

who were tracked using mobile location data, where

the government did not first secure a warrant based on

probable cause for such data, [and]

[2] Policies, procedures, and practices followed to

obtain mobile phone location information for law

enforcement purposes.

App. 20, 28.

2

When the government wants to track an individual’s location

through his or her cell phone, it submits an application to a judge

(usually a magistrate judge) seeking an order compelling a

telecommunications company to provide access to the location data. 

The plaintiffs contend that “[p]rosecutors appear to routinely take the

view that the government can obtain cell site location information

without a warrant, by simply presenting to a magistrate ‘specific and

articulable facts showing . . . reasonable grounds to believe that . . . the

records or other information sought, are relevant and material to an

ongoing criminal investigation.’” ACLU Br. 9 (quoting In re

Application of U.S. for an Order for Disclosure of Telecomms.

Records & Authorizing Use of Pen Register & Trap & Trace, 405 F.

Supp. 2d 435, 444 (S.D.N.Y. 2005) (quoting 18 U.S.C. § 2703(d))).

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On July 1, 2008, the plaintiffs brought suit against the

Department of Justice (DOJ) to compel production of the

requested records. See FOIA, 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(B). 

Thereafter, the Department agreed to conduct a search for the

requested case names, docket numbers, and courts (“docket

information”). It did this by first asking the relevant U.S.

Attorneys’ Offices to identify applications granted by judges (or

magistrate judges), on or after September 12, 2001, to permit the

government to obtain cell phone location data from

telecommunications companies, where the judge did not make

a determination of probable cause. It then asked those offices to

provide the docket information for any case in which an

individual was prosecuted after such an application was granted. 

This inquiry generated a list of docket information for 255

criminal prosecutions. Def.’s Statement of Material Facts Not

in Dispute at 3-4 (App. 37-38). The Department then withheld

the list from disclosure, asserting that it fell within FOIA

Exemptions 6 and 7(C). See 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(6), (7)(C).3

The Justice Department also produced a Vaughn index

describing documents responsive to the plaintiffs’ request for

“policies, procedures, and practices,” and invoking various

FOIA exemptions to justify the redaction or withholding of

some of those documents. See Vaughn v. Rosen, 484 F.2d 820,

826-28 (D.C. Cir. 1973). Among the documents listed in the

Vaughn index was a “Draft Application” to engage in cell phone

tracking (Document 22), which the Department withheld in full,

3

Although FOIA only requires a government agency to disclose

“agency records improperly withheld,” 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(B), and

does not “impose[] [any] duty on the agency to create records,”

Forsham v. Harris, 445 U.S. 169, 186 (1980), the Justice Department

did not resist compiling or disclosing the list on that ground -- perhaps

because it preferred producing the list (if it came to that) to producing

the documents from which the list was created.

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and a “Template Application” (Document 29), which the

Department produced after redacting the docket number. App.

52, 54. The plaintiffs objected to the withholding of the case

name in Document 22, and of the docket numbers in both

Documents 22 and 29.4

The parties filed cross motions for summary judgment. In

assessing the Justice Department’s invocation of Exemptions 6

and 7(C), the district court began by “allocat[ing] a greater

privacy interest to persons who were acquitted, or whose cases

were dismissed or sealed (and remain under seal), and a

considerably lesser privacy interest to persons who were

convicted, or who entered public guilty pleas.” ACLU v. Dep’t

of Justice, 698 F. Supp. 2d 163, 166 (D.D.C. 2010). The court

held that the public interest in disclosure outweighed the privacy

interest in the second category but not in the first. Accordingly,

the court ordered the Department to release the requested docket

information only in cases that ended in convictions or public

guilty pleas. Id. 

With respect to the two government applications for cell

phone data, the court concluded that the Department had

properly withheld the case name and docket numbers under

Exemption 7(C). In light of the plaintiffs’ concession that any

personally identifiable information about surveillance targets

who had not yet been prosecuted could be redacted from the

case name, the court refused to order the “meaningless

production” of a case name in which “nothing would be left but

variants of the phrase ‘In re: Application for Cell Site

4

Other documents listed in the index, or portions thereof, were

either produced to the plaintiffs’ satisfaction before the district court

ruled, see ACLU v. Dep’t of Justice, 698 F. Supp. 2d 163, 165 n.1

(D.D.C. 2010), or are no longer at issue on this appeal, ACLU Br. 4

n.2, 30 n.21.

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Authority.’” Id. at 166-67. The court also rejected the

plaintiffs’ argument that, because such applications are

invariably filed under seal, disclosure of the applications’ docket

numbers would not reveal any personally identifying

information. The court found that disclosure “could reveal

surveillance targets yet to be prosecuted, . . . either because the

cases are not actually sealed, or because the plaintiffs’ promised

motion to unseal could be successful.” Id. at 167. 

Both parties appeal. The Justice Department challenges the

portion of the district court’s decision directing it to release

docket information in prosecutions of persons who were

convicted or entered public guilty pleas. The plaintiffs

challenge the portion of the decision denying their request to

require the production of docket information in prosecutions of

persons who were acquitted, or whose cases were dismissed or

sealed (and remain under seal). The plaintiffs also challenge the

court’s denial of their request to require disclosure of the case

name in the “Draft Application” (Document 22), and the docket

numbers in both that document and the “Template Application”

(Document 29).

II

We review the district court’s disposition on summary

judgment de novo. See Students Against Genocide v. Dep’t of

State, 257 F.3d 828, 833-34 (D.C. Cir. 2001). “In the FOIA

context this requires that we ascertain whether the agency has

sustained its burden of demonstrating that the documents

requested are . . . exempt from disclosure under the FOIA.”

Gallant v. NLRB, 26 F.3d 168, 171 (D.C. Cir. 1994); see 5

U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(B) (stating that “the burden is on the agency

to sustain its action”). 

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FOIA was intended “to pierce the veil of administrative

secrecy and to open agency action to the light of public

scrutiny.” Dep’t of the Air Force v. Rose, 425 U.S. 352, 361

(1976) (internal quotation marks omitted). “Although Congress

enumerated nine exemptions from the disclosure requirement,

‘these limited exemptions do not obscure the basic policy that

disclosure, not secrecy, is the dominant objective of the Act.’” 

Nat’l Ass’n of Home Builders v. Norton, 309 F.3d 26, 32 (D.C.

Cir. 2002) (quoting Rose, 425 U.S. at 361). “At all times[,]

courts must bear in mind that FOIA mandates a ‘strong

presumption in favor of disclosure,’” id. (quoting U.S. Dep’t of

State v. Ray, 502 U.S. 164, 173 (1991)), “and that the statutory

exemptions, which are exclusive, are to be ‘narrowly

construed,’” id. (quoting Rose, 425 U.S. at 361). As the

Supreme Court reminded appellate courts just this year, it has

“often noted the Act’s goal of broad disclosure and insisted that

the exemptions be given a narrow compass.” Milner v. Dep’t of

the Navy, 131 S. Ct. 1259, 1265 (2011) (internal quotation

marks omitted).

FOIA Exemptions 6 and 7(C) seek to protect the privacy of

individuals identified in certain agency records. Under

Exemption 6, “personnel and medical files and similar files”

may be withheld if disclosure “would constitute a clearly

unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” 5 U.S.C.

§ 552(b)(6). Under Exemption 7(C), “records or information

compiled for law enforcement purposes” may be withheld “to

the extent that” disclosure “could reasonably be expected to

constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” 5

U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(C). Although the Justice Department relied

on both exemptions in the district court, we need only consider

whether it properly invoked Exemption 7(C). The plaintiffs

concede that the requested records are subject to that exemption

because they are “records compiled for law enforcement

purposes.” See ACLU, 698 F. Supp. 2d at 165 n.2. And because

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Exemption 7(C) permits withholding of such records if

disclosure would constitute an “unwarranted” invasion of

personal privacy, while Exemption 6 requires a “clearly

unwarranted” invasion to justify nondisclosure, “Exemption

7(C) is more protective of privacy than Exemption 6” and thus

establishes a lower bar for withholding material. U.S. Dep’t of

Defense v. FLRA, 510 U.S. 487, 496 n.6 (1994); see also Nat’l

Archives & Records Admin. v. Favish, 541 U.S. 157, 165-66

(2003).5

In deciding whether the release of particular information

constitutes an “unwarranted” invasion of privacy under

Exemption 7(C), we “must balance the public interest in

disclosure against the [privacy] interest Congress intended the

Exemption to protect.” U.S. Dep’t of Justice v. Reporters

Comm. for Freedom of the Press, 489 U.S. 749, 776 (1989); see

Favish, 541 U.S. at 171; Ray, 502 U.S. at 175 (quoting Rose,

425 U.S. at 372). The public interest that must be weighed in

this balance is the extent to which disclosure advances “the basic

purpose of the Freedom of Information Act ‘to open agency

action to the light of public scrutiny,’” Reporters Comm., 489

U.S. at 772 (quoting Rose, 425 U.S. at 372), thereby furthering

“the citizens’ right to be informed about ‘what their government

is up to,’” id. at 773. 

In this Part, we examine the material the district court

ordered the Justice Department to disclose: docket information

(case name, docket number, and court) from criminal cases in

which the government prosecuted individuals after judges

5

As a consequence, we do not address the parties’ dueling postargument letters discussing the manner in which the Supreme Court’s

recent decision in Milner, see 131 S. Ct. at 1271, which narrowly

construed the term “personnel” in FOIA Exemption 2, affects the

proper construction of FOIA Exemption 6.

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granted applications for cell phone location data without a

determination of probable cause, and in which those individuals

were subsequently convicted or entered public guilty pleas. In

Subpart A we consider the privacy interest and in Subpart B the

public interest attendant to disclosure. In Part III, we consider

the material that the district court declined to order the

Department to disclose.

A

1. The first question we must ask is whether there is any

privacy interest at stake here. In a given case, after all, the

disclosure of the docket number, case name, and court may

alone reveal little or nothing about an individual: the number

and court plainly would not, and although the case name might

(if it included more than just a relatively common last name), by

itself it would disclose neither the charges nor the disposition. 

Nonetheless, in evaluating the privacy impact of the release of

information, the courts have taken into consideration potential

derivative uses of that information.6

 And here, it would take

6

See Dep’t of Defense v. FLRA, 510 U.S. at 501; Ray, 502 U.S.

at 177; FLRA v. U.S. Dep’t of the Treasury, 884 F.2d 1446, 1452

(D.C. Cir. 1989); NARFE v. Horner, 879 F.2d 873, 878 (D.C. Cir.

1989); see also infra note 15. As we explained in NARFE v. Horner: 

In virtually every case in which a privacy concern is

implicated, someone must take steps after the initial

disclosure in order to bring about the untoward effect. 

Disclosure does not, literally by itself, constitute a harm; it

is the requester’s (or another’s) reaction to the disclosure

that can sting. This is only more obvious where disclosure

of the information invades someone’s privacy not because

it is embarrassing but because it invites unwanted intrusions. 

Where there is a substantial probability that disclosure will

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little work for an interested person to use the docket information

on the government’s list to look up the underlying case files in

the public records of the courts, and therein find the information

of interest. Although this can be done manually, it can also be

readily accomplished using the federal court system’s own

public-access database, Public Access to Court Electronic

Records (PACER),7

 or private databases like Westlaw or

LexisNexis. Indeed, the plaintiffs have made clear that they

intend to use the docket information in this way. ACLU Reply

Br. 23-24.

There is also the question of just how much of a privacy

interest a defendant retains regarding the facts of his or her

conviction or public guilty plea. We tend to agree with the

district court that the disclosure of convictions and public pleas

is at the lower end of the privacy spectrum. The parties agree as

well. See ACLU Reply Br. 11; DOJ Br. 19. This is not to say

that a convicted defendant has no privacy interest in the facts of

his conviction. As the government points out, disclosure of a

criminal conviction may be “embarrassing [and] stigmatizing,”

and may endanger one’s prospects “for successful reintegration

into the community.” DOJ Br. 20-21, 26. But it is to say that

those interests are weaker than for individuals who have been

acquitted or whose cases have been dismissed. Accord ACLU

Reply Br. 11; DOJ Br. 19. And they are plainly substantially

cause an interference with personal privacy, it matters not

that there may be two or three links in the causal chain. 

879 F.2d at 878.

7

PACER, provided by the federal judiciary, “is an electronic

public access service that allows users to obtain case and docket

information from [all] federal appellate, district and bankruptcy

courts.” PACER: Public Access to Court Electronic Records,

http://www.pacer.gov.

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weaker than the privacy interests of individuals who have been

investigated but never publicly charged at all. See Fund for

Constitutional Gov’t v. Nat’l Archives & Records Serv., 656

F.2d 856, 864 (D.C. Cir. 1981) (“Typically, the decision not to

prosecute insulates individuals who have been investigated but

not charged from th[e] rather significant intrusion into their

lives” occasioned by public indictment.).8

Nonetheless, there is no real dispute that the scope of

Exemption 7(C) can extend even to convictions and public

pleas. In U.S. Department of Justice v. Reporters Committee for

Freedom of the Press, the Supreme Court held that release of the

contents of an FBI “rap sheet” -- which may have included a

record of the subject’s convictions -- constituted an unwarranted

invasion of personal privacy under FOIA Exemption 7(C). See

489 U.S. at 780. The Court held “as a categorical matter” that

“a third party’s request for law enforcement records or

information about a private citizen can reasonably be expected

to invade that citizen’s privacy,” and that such records may

8

The Justice Department correctly notes this court has held that

disclosure of records revealing that an individual was involved or

mentioned in a law enforcement investigation implicates a significant

privacy interest. See Schrecker v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 349 F.3d 657,

661, 666 (D.C. Cir. 2003); Safecard Servs., Inc. v. SEC, 926 F.2d

1197, 1205 (D.C. Cir. 1991); Fitzgibbon v. CIA, 911 F.2d 755, 767

(D.C. Cir. 1990); Senate of the Commonwealth of P.R. v. U.S. Dep’t

of Justice, 823 F.2d 574, 588 (D.C. Cir. 1987); Fund for

Constitutional Gov’t, 656 F.2d at 863-64, 873; Bast v. Dep’t of

Justice, 665 F.2d 1251, 1254 (D.C. Cir. 1981); see also Favish, 541

U.S. at 166; Blackwell v. FBI, 2011 WL 2600831, at *2 (D.C. Cir.

July 1, 2011). But in those cases, the subjects of the court’s concern

were individuals who had never been charged, let alone convicted. 

Moreover, we again note that the question in this case is not whether

a convicted defendant has any privacy interests, but rather how much

of an interest he has in the public-record facts of his conviction.

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therefore not be disclosed in the absence of a cognizable public

interest. Id. As the docket numbers and case names the

plaintiffs seek constitute “law enforcement . . . information” that

will (through derivative use) identify private citizens who have

been criminally prosecuted, disclosure implicates those citizens’

privacy interests.

2. The privacy interests at stake in this case, however, are

considerably weaker than those at issue in Reporters Committee. 

The law enforcement records at issue there were rap sheets that

revealed the subjects’ “date of birth and physical characteristics,

as well as a history of arrests, charges, convictions, and

incarcerations” in every jurisdiction in the country. 489 U.S. at

752. And they covered the subject’s entire life: the FBI

normally preserved a rap sheet until its subject turned eighty

years old. Id. 

Here, the information sought is quite different. As already

noted, the list alone contains little that is personal. But even if

the docket information is used to find the underlying

proceedings, for any particular individual it most likely would

reveal only a single prosecution, rather than a comprehensive

scorecard of the person’s entire criminal history.9

 It would

disclose only information concerning a conviction or plea; it

would not disclose mere charges or arrests. It would disclose

only information that has already been the subject of a public

proceeding (either a trial or public guilty plea), rather than

actions (like arrests) that may not have taken place in public. It

would disclose only information that is available in public

records, which post-indictment filings always are and arrests

9

Disclosure would reveal more than one prosecution only if there

were multiple prosecutions of the same individual among the 255

prosecutions listed. The Justice Department has not suggested that is

the case.

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may not be. Cf. Reporters Comm., 489 U.S. at 754 n.2 (noting

that in 47 states, “nonconviction data cannot be disclosed at all

for non-criminal justice purposes, or may be disclosed only in

narrowly defined circumstances, for specified purposes”).10

Finally, the information at issue here is all less than (and

probably quite a bit less than) ten years old,11 unlike the

Reporters Committee rap sheets that recorded a lifetime of

everything from major crimes to youthful indiscretions.

The fact that information about these proceedings is readily

available to the public reduces further still the incursion on

privacy resulting from disclosure. In Reporters Committee, the

10The Justice Department insists that these distinctions are

irrelevant. After all, it notes, “the information that the Court held had

been properly protected” in Reporters Committee “related to a single

individual, Charles Medico, who may or may not have actually been

prosecuted,” and “nowhere did the Court suggest that ‘rap sheets’ of

individuals who had only been prosecuted on one occasion could not

be withheld.” DOJ Br. 24-25. But Reporters Committee considered

rap sheets as “a categorical matter” -- “without regard to individual

circumstances” -- and barred disclosure in the absence of a cognizable

public interest because of “the practical obscurity” of their contents. 

489 U.S. at 780. As noted in Part II.A.3 below, the factors that

rendered rap sheet information practically obscure do not apply to the

individual public prosecutions at issue in this case.

11The Justice Department compiled the list of docket information

by asking U.S. Attorneys’ Offices about applications for location data

that were granted after September 12, 2001. Def.’s Statement of

Material Facts Not in Dispute at 3 (App. 37); see Oral Arg. Recording

23:48-24:04. Since the docket information at issue here comes only

from cases that subsequently led to indictments, and hence that had to

have been filed after that date, and then only when the indictments led

to pleas or convictions, which had to have come later still, it is likely

that the information at issue relates to cases that are substantially less

than ten years old.

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Court recognized that “the extent of the protection accorded a

privacy right at common law rested in part on the degree of

dissemination of the allegedly private fact,” and that

“information may be classified as ‘private’ if it is . . . not freely

available to the public.” Id. at 763-64. It further noted that,

although “one did not necessarily forfeit a privacy interest in

matters made part of the public record, . . . the privacy interest

[in such matters] was diminished.” Id. at 764 n.15; see id.

(“[T]he interests in privacy fade when the information involved

already appears on the public record.” (quoting Cox Broad.

Corp. v. Cohn, 420 U.S. 469, 494-95 (1975)); Bartholdi Cable

Co. v. FCC, 114 F.3d 274, 282 (D.C. Cir. 1997) (affirming

agency’s decision to release documents identifying individuals

responsible for regulatory violations because their Exemption 6

privacy interests were “‘minor’ . . . given that these individuals

have been identified in public documents filed with the

Commission”).

3. Of course, information that is technically public may be

“practical[ly] obscur[e].” Reporters Comm., 489 U.S. at 762,

780 (internal quotation marks omitted). Reporters Committee

held that, in such circumstances, an individual’s privacy interest

in limiting disclosure or dissemination of information does not

disappear just because it was once publicly released. Id. at 762-

63, 780. But unlike the rap sheet information in Reporters

Committee, the information at issue here is not practically

obscure.

In Reporters Committee, the Court emphasized that there is

an important “distinction, in terms of personal privacy, between

scattered disclosure of the bits of information contained in a rap

sheet and revelation of the rap sheet as a whole.” Id. at 764; see

United States v. Maynard, 615 F.3d 544, 561 (D.C. Cir. 2010). 

Indeed, the Court noted that “[t]he very fact that federal funds

have been spent to prepare . . . these criminal-history files

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demonstrates that [even] the individual items of information in

the summaries would not otherwise be ‘freely available’ either

to the officials who have access to the underlying files or to the

general public.” 489 U.S. at 764. What set rap sheets apart

from other records implicating personal privacy, then, was “the

compilation of otherwise hard-to-obtain information,” including

“information that would otherwise have surely been forgotten

long before a person attains age 80, when the FBI’s rap sheets

are discarded.” Id. at 764, 771. “Plainly,” the Court said, “there

is a vast difference between the public records that might be

found after a diligent search of courthouse files, county archives,

and local police stations throughout the country and a

computerized summary located in a single clearinghouse of

information.” Id. at 764. This conclusion, the Court declared,

was further “supported by the web of federal [and state]

statutory and regulatory provisions that limit[] the disclosure of

rap-sheet information.” Id. at 764-65. 

In this case, however, disclosure will reveal only the “bits,”

not the “whole.” As already discussed, the most that disclosure

is likely to lead to is the fact of a single conviction, not a

comprehensive scorecard of a person’s entire criminal history

across multiple jurisdictions. Nor is there a web of statutory or

regulatory policies obscuring that information, nor much

expense nor logistical difficulty in gathering it. To the contrary,

computerized government services like PACER make it possible

to access court filings concerning any federal defendant from the

comfort of one’s home or office, quite unlike the “diligent

search of courthouse files, county archives, and local police

stations throughout the country” that a citizen would have had

to undertake to replicate the contents of a rap sheet, Reporters

Comm., 489 U.S. at 764. In addition, newspapers regularly

report on federal prosecutions, and their accounts can easily be

found on the internet. Indeed, by routinely issuing press releases

that name the individuals that it has indicted, and then naming

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them again when they plead guilty or are convicted, the Justice

Department has itself made the process infinitely easier.12 If

someone wants to know whether his neighbor or potential

employee has been indicted for, convicted of, or pled guilty to

a federal offense, he may well find out by simply entering a

Google search for that person’s name.13 Nor is there the kind of

temporal obscurity the Court found in Reporters Committee,

where many of the incidents on the rap sheets, even if once

public, “would otherwise have surely been forgotten.” 

Reporters Comm., 489 U.S. at 771. As we have noted, the

prosecutions at issue here are likely to have taken place

considerably less than ten years ago. 

We also disagree with the Department’s suggestion that the

disclosures sought here will draw renewed attention to

individuals in a way that the initial disclosures did not. It is

little more than speculation to suggest that friends or associates

who did not learn of a conviction at the time it occurred

12The Justice Department insists that “the fact that the

government voluntarily chooses to inform the public of certain

prosecutorial activities that it deems newsworthy does not mean that

it is insensitive to the FOIA privacy interests of the individuals it

prosecutes.” DOJ Reply Br. 4. But no one is questioning the

government’s sensitivity. We point out the Department’s press release

practice not to pass judgment on it, but to show that it has further

diminished whatever practical obscurity there might have been with

respect to the names of indicted and convicted individuals.

13Google searches for variations of the phrase “the United States

Attorney . . . announced the indictment of,” restricted to the last ten

years, yield thousands of results. The same is true of searches

substituting “conviction” or “guilty plea” for “indictment.” A review

of the first twenty pages of results for each such search shows that

they consist primarily of news reports or press releases that identify

the names and charged offenses of indicted or convicted individuals.

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17

(whether through press accounts, press releases, or other means)

will hear of it for the first time merely because the Justice

Department releases a list of docket numbers, courts, and case

names. See Norton, 309 F.3d at 34-35 (discounting the import

of an asserted interference with personal privacy because the

agency failed to show that such interference “[was] likely to

occur”). Such a list is surely less likely to draw attention to a

name than was the initial press coverage of an indictment and

conviction. Nor are we persuaded that, when a person has

already been publicly charged and convicted of a federal

offense, disclosure of that person’s name on a list of persons

whose cell phones were tracked will materially increase the

number of his or her possible future friends and associates who

will be exposed to the information.14

The Justice Department maintains that the information the

plaintiffs seek is practically obscure because they cannot

identify the prosecutions in which they are interested without the

government’s assistance. But all that is practically obscure is

information regarding the government’s policy -- that is, which

prosecutions involve the Department’s use of warrantless cell

phone tracking, and what the underlying records show about that

policy. What is not obscure is information that raises issues of

personal privacy -- that is, the fact that particular individuals

have been convicted of or pled guilty to crimes. Reporters

Committee was concerned solely about the latter; any interest in

keeping the government’s own policies obscure runs directly

counter to FOIA’s central purpose.

14This is not to discount the possibility that a FOIA request might

be worded in such a way as to generate a list of convictions that,

because of particularly stigmatic associations or otherwise, could draw

special attention to the names on the list and so create heightened

privacy concerns. But the government has made no such argument

with respect to the list of docket information at issue in this case.

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18

4. Finally, the Department calls our attention to a derivative

use of the requested material that it regards as particularly

harmful to privacy interests: the plaintiffs’ suggestion that they

may contact convicted “defendants and/or their counsel to

determine whether [the] defendants ever learned that they were

the targets of warrantless cell phone tracking.” ACLU Reply Br.

24. There is no doubt that the courts have held that the risk of

unwanted contact following a FOIA disclosure is a privacy

interest that must be weighed in the privacy interest/public

interest balance. See Dep’t of Defense v. FLRA, 510 U.S. at 501;

Ray, 502 U.S. at 176-77; FLRA v. U.S. Dep’t of the Treasury,

884 F.2d 1446, 1452 (D.C. Cir. 1989); NARFE v. Horner, 879

F.2d 873, 878 (D.C. Cir. 1989). But in all of those cases, the

intrusive contact likely to follow from disclosure was

enormously greater than the relatively minimal potential contact

at issue in this case.15 Moreover, in each of those cases, the

15See Dep’t of Defense v. FLRA, 510 U.S. at 501 (citing “the

influx of union-related mail, and . . . telephone calls or visits,” as well

as contact by “commercial advertisers and solicitors,” that would

result from disclosure of agency employees’ names and home

addresses); FLRA v. Dep’t of the Treasury, 884 F.2d at 1452 (citing

the “unwanted barrage of mailings and personal solicitations” that

would follow disclosure of federal employees’ names and home

addresses (internal quotation marks omitted)); Horner, 879 F.2d at 878

(noting that release of federal annuitants’ names and addresses would

subject them to a “barrage of solicitations . . . in the mail, over the

telephone, and at the front door”). 

Department of State v. Ray, 502 U.S. at 175-77, offers a

particularly instructive comparison. In that case, the requesters sought

the government’s unredacted summaries of interviews of unsuccessful

Haitian asylum seekers. Those summaries contained not only the

interviewees’ names and addresses, but also “highly personal

information regarding marital and employment status, children, living

conditions and attempts to enter the United States.” Id. at 175. 

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19

courts found that the privacy impact outweighed the public

interest in disclosure because the public interest was either

negligible or non-existent.16 As we discuss in Subpart B below,

the public interest in disclosure is substantially higher in this

case and more than sufficient to tip the scales against the

marginal privacy intrusion that could occur.

5. In sum, although the disclosure at issue here is sufficient

to warrant consideration under Exemption 7(C) because it would

compromise more than a de minimis privacy interest, it would

Moreover, because the interviewees had “left their homeland in

violation of Haitian law[,] . . . the privacy interest in protecting these

individuals from any retaliatory action that might result from a

renewed interest in their aborted attempts to emigrate” had to be

“given great weight.” Id. at 176-77. On these bases, the Court

concluded that “disclosure of the interviewees’ names would be a

significant invasion of their privacy because it would subject them to

possible embarrassment and retaliatory action,” and that the

requesters’ “intent to interview the returnees magnifie[d] the

importance of maintaining the confidentiality of their identities.” Id.

at 177 & n.12.

16Dep’t of Defense v. FLRA, 510 U.S. at 502 (finding that there

was a “negligible FOIA-related public interest in disclosure” of

agency employees’ home addresses); Ray, 502 U.S. at 179 (finding

that disclosure of the requested material would not provide, or lead to,

“any relevant information that is not set forth in the documents that

have already been produced,” and that “[m]ere speculation about

hypothetical public benefits cannot outweigh a demonstrably

significant invasion of privacy”); FLRA v. Dep’t of the Treasury, 884

F.2d at 1452 (noting that “[Horner] found the interest in disclosure [of

retirees’ names and addresses] to be absolute zero,” and that the

interest in disclosing the same information regarding current workers

was only “modestly” higher).

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20

not compromise much more.17 Neither the specific list actually

at issue, nor information that might be derived from the docket

information on that list, will disclose personal information that

is not already publicly available and readily accessible to anyone

who might be interested in it. Nor will disclosure under FOIA

make that information any more accessible than it already is

through publicly available computerized databases. At most, it

will simply provide one more place in which a computerized

search will find the same person’s name and conviction -- and

even that is only on the assumption that someone takes the

docket information from the list, looks up the underlying cases,

and then puts that underlying information on the internet. 

B

On the other side of the balance, we find a significant public

interest in disclosure, something altogether absent in Reporters

Committee. Because the disclosure of private citizens’ criminal

histories “reveals little or nothing about [the] agency’s own

conduct,” and because that was all that was at issue in Reporters

Committee, the “public interest in disclosure [was] at its nadir”

in that case. Reporters Comm., 489 U.S. at 773, 780. By

contrast, as we discuss below, the disclosure of prosecutions in

which the defendants were subject to warrantless cell phone

tracking, and then were convicted or pled guilty, would shed

light on government conduct. Accordingly, it falls within

FOIA’s scope because it advances “the citizens’ right to be

17Cf. Multi Ag Media, LLC v. Dep’t of Agric., 515 F.3d 1224,

1229 (D.C. Cir. 2008) (“The balancing analysis for FOIA Exemption

6 requires that we first determine whether disclosure of the files

‘would compromise a substantial, as opposed to de minimis, privacy

interest,’ because ‘[i]f no significant privacy interest is implicated, . . .

FOIA demands disclosure.’” (quoting Horner, 879 F.2d at 874)).

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21

informed about what their government is up to.” Reporters

Comm., 489 U.S. at 773 (internal quotation marks omitted). 

1. The use of and justification for warrantless cell phone

tracking is a topic of considerable public interest: it has

received widespread media attention18 and has been a focus of

inquiry in several congressional hearings considering, among

other things, whether the Electronic Communications Privacy

Act of 1986, Pub. L. No. 99-508, 100 Stat. 1848 (1986), should

be revised either to limit or to facilitate the practice.19 Courts

18See, e.g., Adam Cohen, What Your Cell Phone Could Be Telling

the Government, TIME, Sept. 15, 2010; Editorial, Should Police Use

Your Cellphone to Track You?, DENVER POST, June 27, 2010, at D3;

PBS Newshour: With Location-Tracking Technology, Cell Users

Paying Price of Privacy (television broadcast June 22, 2010),

transcript available at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/ bb/science/

an-june10/ cell_06-22.html; Steve Chapman, Big Brother in Your Cell,

CHI. TRIB., Apr. 1, 2010, at 17; Miguel Helft, Technology Coalition

Seeks Stronger Privacy Laws, N.Y. TIMES, Mar. 31, 2010, at B1;

Michael Isikoff, The Snitch in Your Pocket, NEWSWEEK, Mar. 1, 2010,

at 40; Ellen Nakashima, Judges Urge Standard Cellphone-Tracking

Policy, WASH. POST, Nov. 14, 2008; Ellen Nakashima, Cellphone

Tracking Powers on Request, WASH.POST, Nov. 23, 2007, at A1; Orin

Kerr, Applying the Mosaic Theory of the Fourth Amendment to

Disclosure of Stored Records, THE VOLOKH CONSPIRACY (Apr. 5,

2011, 4:54 PM), http://volokh.com/2011/04/05/.

19See, e.g., The Electronic Communications Privacy Act:

Promoting Security and Protecting Privacy in the Digital Age: 

Hearing Before the S. Judiciary Comm., 111th Cong. (2010); ECPA

Reform and the Revolution in Location Based Technologies and

Services: Hearing Before the Subcomm. on the Constitution, Civil

Rights, and Civil Liberties of the H. Comm. on the Judiciary, 111th

Cong. (2010); The Collection and Use of Location Information for

Commercial Purposes: Hearing Before the Subcomm. on Commerce,

Trade, and Consumer Protection and the Subcomm. on Commc’ns,

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22

are divided as to whether the government must show probable

cause before it can obtain cell phone location data,20 as well as

on related questions regarding warrantless GPS surveillance.21

Tech., and the Internet of the H. Comm. on Energy & Commerce,

111th Cong. (2010).

20Compare In re Application of U.S. for an Order . . . Authorizing

Disclosure of Location-Based Servs., 727 F. Supp. 2d 571 (W.D. Tex.

2010), In re Applications of U.S. for Orders Authorizing Disclosure

of Cell Site Info., Nos. 05-403 et al., 2005 WL 3658531 (D.D.C. Oct.

26, 2005), In re Application of U.S. for an Order . . . Authorizing

Release of Subscriber Info. and/or Cell Site Info., 396 F. Supp. 2d 294

(E.D.N.Y. 2005), and In re Application for Pen Register &

Trap/Trace Device with Cell Site Location Authority, 396 F. Supp. 2d

747 (S.D. Tex. 2005), with In re Application of U.S. for Order

Directing Provider of Elec. Commc’n Serv. to Disclose Records to

Gov’t, 620 F.3d 304, 318 (3d Cir. 2010), United States v. Forest, 355

F.3d 942, 950-52 (6th Cir. 2004), vacated on other grounds, 543 U.S.

1100 (2005), In re Application of U.S. for an Order Authorizing Use

of Two Pen Register & Trap & Trace Devices, 632 F. Supp. 2d 202

(E.D.N.Y. 2008), In re Application of U.S. for an Order for

Prospective Cell Site Location Info. on a Certain Cellular Telephone,

460 F. Supp. 2d 448 (S.D.N.Y. 2006), In re Application of U.S. for an

Order . . . Authorizing Release of Subscriber Info. and/or Cell Site

Info., 411 F. Supp. 2d 678 (W.D. La. 2006), and In re Application of 

U.S. for an Order for Disclosure of Telecommc’ns Records &

Authorizing Use of Pen Register & Trap & Trace, 405 F. Supp. 2d 435

(S.D.N.Y. 2005).

21Compare Maynard, 615 F.3d at 563-67 (holding that a warrant

was required to use a GPS device to monitor the defendant’s vehicle

for a month), with United States v. Marquez, 605 F.3d 604, 609-10

(8th Cir. 2010) (holding that a warrant was not required to install a

GPS tracking device on the defendant’s vehicle for a reasonable

period of time), United States v. Pineda-Moreno, 591 F.3d 1212,

1216-17 (9th Cir. 2010) (holding that use of a GPS device to track the

defendant’s vehicle over a four-month period did not violate the

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23

The Supreme Court has recently granted certiorari to address the

GPS issue. See United States v. Jones, 2011 WL 1456728 (June

27, 2011), granting cert. to Maynard, 615 F.3d 544.

The disclosure sought by the plaintiffs would inform this

ongoing public policy discussion by shedding light on the scope

and effectiveness of cell phone tracking as a law enforcement

tool. It would, for example, provide information about the kinds

of crimes the government uses cell phone tracking data to

investigate. As the plaintiffs note, with respect to wiretapping

Congress has balanced privacy interests with law enforcement

needs by permitting the government to use that technique for

only the more serious offenses, see 18 U.S.C. § 2516, and the

plaintiffs (and others) may decide to argue for similar legislation

to govern cell phone tracking. Disclosure would also provide

information regarding how often prosecutions against people

who have been tracked are successful, thus shedding some light

on the efficacy of the technique and whether pursuing it is

worthwhile in light of the privacy implications. Information

from suppression hearings in these cases could provide further

insight regarding the efficacy of the technique by revealing

whether courts suppress its fruits, and would disclose the

standard or standards the government uses to justify warrantless

tracking. Information from suppression hearings would also

provide facts regarding the duration of tracking and the quality

of tracking data, facts that would inform the public discussion

concerning the intrusiveness of this investigative tool. 

There are obviously many caveats about the value of the

information that might be derived from the requested disclosure. 

Fourth Amendment), and United States v. Garcia, 474 F.3d 994, 996-

98 (7th Cir. 2007) (holding that a warrant was not required to conduct

continuous electronic tracking of the defendant’s vehicle using a GPS

device).

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For example, defendants may have been charged with lesser

offenses than the ones upon which the tracking was originally

predicated, thus making it appear that the technique was used for

less serious crimes than was actually the case. And for a host of

other reasons, the sample of prosecutions at issue here may be

unrepresentative of the Justice Department’s overall practice. 

But the fact that the data will not be perfect does not mean that

there is no public interest in their disclosure. 

Nor are we persuaded by the government’s contention that

the interest in informing the public discussion is deficient

because the plaintiffs have insufficient evidence that disclosure

will show government wrongdoing. Whether the government’s

tracking policy is legal or illegal, proper or improper, is

irrelevant to this case. It is true that, where “the public interest

being asserted is to show that responsible officials acted

negligently or otherwise improperly in the performance of their

duties, the requester must establish more than a bare suspicion

in order to obtain disclosure.” Favish, 541 U.S. at 174. But the

plaintiffs are not (or at least not only) seeking to show that the

government’s tracking policy is legally improper,22 but rather to

show what that policy is and how effective or intrusive it is. 

“[M]atters of substantive law enforcement policy . . . are

properly the subject of public concern,” whether or not the

policy in question is lawful. Reporters Comm., 489 U.S. at 766

n.18.

Finally, the Justice Department contends that the

incremental contribution of disclosure to the public interest is

negligible “given the extensive public attention that this issue is

already receiving.” DOJ Br. 32. This is nothing more than a

Catch-22 argument: if public attention were not already

22That distinguishes this case from cases like our recent decision

in Blackwell v. FBI, 2011 WL 2600831 (D.C. Cir. July 1, 2011).

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25

focused, the government would argue that shows there is no

public interest in disclosure; because there is public attention, it

argues that no more is needed.23 But there is no doubt that much

of the information the plaintiffs seek to develop from the FOIA

disclosure here -- the connection between tracking applications

and actual prosecutions -- is not currently in the public domain. 

For the reasons stated above, there is also no doubt that the

information interested parties can derive from that connection

will yield further information about the government’s policy that

is not now readily available. The fact that the public already has

some information does not mean that more will not advance the

public interest.

2. The Department protests that, because any benefit to the

public interest accrues from derivative use of the docket

information and not from that information itself, that benefit

cannot be considered as part of the public interest analysis. And

it is true that the case names and docket numbers standing alone

generate no public benefit; only through derivative uses can

information valuable to the public be obtained. But this court

takes derivative uses into account in evaluating the impact of

disclosure on the public interest,24 just as both this court and the

23See JOSEPH HELLER, CATCH-22, at 46 (paperback ed. 2004)

(“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified

that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were

real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy

and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he

did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more

missions. . . . Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute

simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. 

‘That’s some catch, that Catch-22,’ he observed.”).

24For example, in Multi Ag Media LLC v. Department of

Agriculture, 515 F.3d 1224 (D.C. Cir. 2008), the court rejected the

agency’s contention that disclosure of information from its database

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26

Supreme Court do in evaluating the impact of disclosure on

personal privacy.25

The government claims that “the Supreme Court has

questioned but not decided whether . . . a ‘derivative use’ theory

is valid.” DOJ Br. 38 n.4 (citing Ray, 502 U.S. 164). But this

is only half true. In Ray, it was the government, not the Court,

that did the questioning: “The Government,” the Court reported,

“argues that we should adopt a categorical rule entirely

excluding the interest in such use from the process of

balancing.” 502 U.S. at 178. For itself, however, the Court said

nothing more than this: “There is no need to adopt such a rigid

of farm data would “say[] nothing about how the agency administers

its programs,” because “[w]ith the information from the database, the

public can more easily determine whether USDA is catching cheaters

and lawfully administering its subsidy and benefit programs.” Id. at

1232. In Getman v. NLRB, 450 F.2d 670 (D.C. Cir. 1971), we held

that disclosing certain names and addresses of employees would serve

the public interest by facilitating interviews for an academic study. 

We likewise considered derivative uses in Painting and Drywall Work

Preservation Fund, Inc. v. Department of Housing and Urban

Development, 936 F.2d 1300 (D.C. Cir. 1991), and FLRA v.

Department of the Treasury, 884 F.2d 1446, although we ultimately

concluded in both that the public interest in disclosure was too minor

to outweigh the privacy interests at issue. See Painting & Drywall

Work Pres. Fund, 936 F.2d at 1303 (noting that “a relevant public

interest could exist where ‘the names of current workers might provide

leads for an investigative reporter seeking to ferret out what

government is up to,’” but finding that there was an alternative way to

obtain the information and that FOIA disclosure did not offer a

significant enough advantage to “outweigh the . . . workers’

significant privacy interest” (quoting FLRA v. Dep’t of the Treasury,

884 F.2d at 1452 (internal quotation marks omitted))).

25See cases cited supra note 6. As we discuss in the text that

follows, the two kinds of derivative use go hand in glove.

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27

rule to decide this case . . . . Accordingly, we need not address

the question whether a ‘derivative use’ theory would ever justify

release of information about private individuals.” Id. at 178-79. 

It thus left this court’s own case law on the issue intact.26

Moreover, the derivative use issue gives the Justice

Department a Catch-22 headache of its own. The Department

correctly notes that Justice Scalia, in his opinion concurring in

the judgment in Ray, “opined that such ‘derivative use’ ‘to

establish a public interest’ is improper under FOIA.” DOJ Br.

38 n.4 (quoting Ray, 502 U.S. at 180-81 (Scalia, J., concurring

26The Justice Department also urges that, in evaluating the public

interest, we may not consider the plaintiffs’ contemplated derivative

uses because it is “well settled that the ‘identity of the requesting

party’ and the ‘purposes for which the request for information is

made’ have ‘no bearing’ on whether such information must be

disclosed under FOIA.” DOJ Br. 35 (quoting Dep’t of Defense v.

FLRA, 510 U.S. at 496 (quoting Reporters Comm., 489 U.S. at 771)). 

But the quoted cases do not hold that derivative use may not be

considered where -- as here -- such use (by the requester or anyone

else) will further FOIA’s purpose of shedding light on the operations

and activities of government. Rather, they hold that the rights of all

requesters are equal and that a requester’s parochial interests -- if

unrelated to FOIA’s purpose -- may not be considered. See Reporters

Comm., 489 U.S. at 771 (“[T]he rights of the two press respondents in

this case are no different from those that might be asserted by any

other third party, such as a neighbor or prospective employer[,

because,] [a]s we have repeatedly stated, Congress clearly intended the

FOIA to give any member of the public as much right to disclosure as

one with a special interest” in a particular document. (internal

quotation marks omitted)); Dep’t of Defense v. FLRA, 510 U.S. at 497

(holding that, although the requesting unions’ interest in obtaining the

home addresses of agency employees “might allow the unions to

communicate more effectively with employees, . . . it would not

appreciably further the citizens’ right to be informed about what their

government is up to” (internal quotation marks omitted)).

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in part and concurring in the judgment)). But the Department

neglects to mention the remainder of Justice Scalia’s analysis: 

“[D]erivative use on the public-benefits side, and derivative use

on the personal-privacy side must surely go together.” 502 U.S.

at 181. “[T]here is no plausible reason,” he said, “to allow it for

the one and bar it for the other.” Id. 

Accordingly, even under the authority the government cites,

if we may not consider derivative use in determining the impact

of disclosure on the public interest side, we also may not

consider it in determining disclosure’s impact on privacy

interests. And without derivative use, the Department would fail

to meet the threshold for invoking Exemption 7(C) at all. If we

do not consider the possibility that the plaintiffs or others will

follow the path from the list of docket information to the

underlying court records, the only question left is whether there

is any privacy interest in a list of docket numbers, case names,

and courts. Of these, only uncommon names (e.g., United States

v. Merrick Garland, rather than United States v. John Smith)

would have any chance at all of identifying particular

individuals, and the district court could eliminate even that

possibility by redacting the names. That would still leave the

plaintiffs with all they need (the docket number and court) to

pursue their planned derivative use, but it would extinguish any

privacy interest. And if there is no privacy interest, Exemption

7(C) simply does not apply. Perhaps for this reason, the

Department acknowledged at oral argument that, if we consider

derivative use for evaluating privacy concerns, we must do the

same for the public interest. See Oral Arg. Recording 27:16-:37.

In sum, because disclosure of the information considered in

this Part would “shed[] light on [the government’s] performance

of its statutory duties,” it “falls squarely within [FOIA’s]

statutory purpose.” Reporters Comm., 489 U.S. at 773. And in

light of the strength of the public interest in disclosure and the

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29

relative weakness of the privacy interests at stake, we conclude

that production of the requested information will not constitute

an “unwarranted” invasion of personal privacy under Exemption

7(C). 

III

In this Part, we consider the plaintiffs’ challenge to the

district court’s refusal to direct the government to produce: (A)

the list of docket information for criminal cases in which the

defendants were acquitted, or for cases that were dismissed or

sealed (and remain under seal); and (B) the case name in the

“Draft Application” (Document 22), and the docket numbers in

both that document and the “Template Application” (Document

29). As to both, we conclude that a remand for further

development of the record is in order.

A

In balancing the public and private interests implicated by

disclosure of the Department’s list of docket information, the

district court found dispositive the distinction between

indictments resulting in convictions or guilty pleas, and those

resulting in acquittals or dismissals, or cases that remain sealed. 

As we noted in Part II, this distinction makes some intuitive

sense, as both parties agree that the disclosure of information

regarding acquittals, dismissal of charges, or sealed cases raises

greater privacy concerns than the disclosure of information

regarding public convictions or public pleas. See ACLU Reply

Br. 11; DOJ Br. 19; Oral Arg. Recording 38:10 (agreement by

plaintiffs’ counsel that there is a distinction between the privacy

interest implicated by disclosure of convictions and public guilty

pleas and that implicated by disclosure of acquittals and

dismissals). But whether that is enough of a distinction to

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30

justify withholding under Exemption 7(C) is a harder question. 

It is a question we need not answer today.

The plaintiffs acknowledge that: 

This case is in an odd posture because neither party

argued below that the district court should split the

difference by withholding some docket information

and disclosing other docket information. The district

court sua sponte devised its distinction between cases

ending in conviction or guilty pleas and cases resulting

in acquittal or dismissal or that remain sealed.

ACLU Reply Br. 3 n.3. As a consequence, the record does not

reveal whether there are any cases that fall into the latter

category. At oral argument, neither party could tell us whether

there are any, and the Justice Department acknowledged that it

is possible there are none. See Oral Arg. Recording 22:10.

Rather than attempt to resolve a question that may turn out

to be purely academic, we conclude that the better course is to

vacate this portion of the district court’s decision and remand the

case for that court to determine whether any of the docket

numbers refer to cases in which the defendants were acquitted,

or to cases that were dismissed or sealed (and remain sealed). 

The court may develop this information by requiring affidavits

of the government or additional entries in the government’s

Vaughn index. See Oral Arg. Recording 22:57

(acknowledgment by government counsel that the district court

may resolve the question by insisting on a more detailed Vaughn

index that would indicate the status of the cases). Needless to

say, if there are no such cases, that will resolve this particular

request.

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B

The plaintiffs also seek disclosure of the docket number and

case name (with personally identifiable information redacted) of

one application to engage in warrantless cell phone tracking that

the government withheld in full (Document 22), and the docket

number of another application that the government produced in

partially redacted form (Document 29). The plaintiffs intend to

use this information to locate the applications and the underlying

case files, and to move to unseal them if they are currently

sealed. ACLU Br. 32. The district court was concerned that,

among other things, this disclosure “could reveal surveillance

targets yet to be prosecuted, . . . either because the cases are not

actually sealed, or because the plaintiffs’ promised motion to

unseal could be successful.” ACLU, 698 F. Supp. 2d at 167. 

Once again, the record is inadequate to resolve this issue. 

The Vaughn index labels the documents as, respectively, a

“Draft Application” and a “Template Application,” which

suggests they are internal drafts containing information that may

be covered by the deliberative-process or work-product

privileges cognizable under FOIA Exemption 5, 5 U.S.C.

§ 552(b)(5). See Rockwell Int’l Corp. v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice,

235 F.3d 598, 601 (D.C. Cir. 2001). Indeed, although the

district court did not address Exemption 5, the Justice

Department asserted that exemption in the district court and

mentions the exemption in its appellate brief. See DOJ Br. 43

n.6. The plaintiffs counter that the fact that each document

bears a docket number “suggest[s] that it was likely filed with a

court,” and hence does not constitute work product. ACLU Br.

30. When asked at oral argument, however, Department counsel

stated that the status of both documents is unclear, and that he

did not know whether either application was ever filed in court. 

See Oral Arg. Recording 34:20-35:36. 

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 The plaintiffs’ appellate briefs do not argue for disclosure

of documents that are merely drafts or templates. They ask only

for disclosure of docket information in “cases in which

prosecutors filed an application for warrantless cell phone

location tracking.” ACLU Br. 12 (emphasis added). 

Accordingly, if neither Document 22 nor Document 29 fits that

description, this issue, too, will resolve itself.

But even if the applications were filed, we do not know

whether they relate to pre-indictment investigations or to cases

that have already been indicted. Nor do we know whether, even

if the latter, there are still ongoing investigations regarding other

targets of the applications. Indeed, the district court worried that

disclosure could “lead to release of personally identifiable

information about surveillance targets who have yet to be

prosecuted.” ACLU, 698 F. Supp. 2d at 166. These distinctions

may be significant and may, depending on the facts, warrant

withholding under (inter alia) Exemption 7(A) -- as law

enforcement records, the disclosure of which “could reasonably

be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings,” 5

U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(A). The government asserted this exemption

in the district court as well.

Nor do we know whether, if filed, the applications are

currently under seal. See ACLU Reply Br. 35 (“Plaintiffs have

no way of determining whether the docket numbers correspond

to sealed cases or whether the targets were indicted.”). The

district court thought there was a possibility that “the cases are

not actually sealed.” ACLU, 696 F. Supp. 2d at 167.27 This

raises still further problems, including the possibility that

following the docket information could lead the plaintiffs or

27As we have noted, the district court was also concerned that,

even if sealed, “the ACLU’s promised motion to unseal could be

successful.” ACLU, 698 F. Supp. 2d at 167.

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others to applications that disclose not only the identities of

convicted defendants, but also of acquitted or uncharged third

parties. As we noted above, it is one thing to disclose the

identities of targets who were eventually convicted in public

proceedings; but the privacy calculus becomes increasingly

more significant if disclosure extends to those who were

acquitted, or to those whose activities were never the focus of

public attention, such as uncharged investigative subjects,

witnesses, or bystanders. Cf. Favish, 541 U.S. at 166 (noting

that “[t]here is special reason” to protect data regarding “persons

interviewed as witnesses or initial suspects” as “to which the

public does not have a general right of access in the ordinary

course”); Schrecker v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 349 F.3d 657, 666

(D.C. Cir. 2003) (holding that “persons involved in law

enforcement investigations -- witnesses, informants, and the

investigating agents -- have a substantial interest in seeing that

their participation remains secret” (internal quotation marks

omitted)).

In their reply brief, the plaintiffs suggest that “[i]f anything

hinges on the characterization of the record, this Court should

remand to the district court for consideration in the first

instance.” ACLU Reply Br. 35 n.12. Because we think quite a

lot may hinge on the record, we accept this suggestion. We will

vacate and remand this portion of the district court’s decision as

well, and direct the court to determine the status of the two

withheld documents with respect to the distinctions described

above. The court may develop this information by requiring

affidavits of the government or additional entries in the Vaughn

index, or by in camera examination of the underlying

documents. See Mays v. DEA, 234 F.3d 1324, 1328 (D.C. Cir.

2000) (remanding where the Vaughn index was insufficient for

the court to tell “whether and to what extent release of the

‘investigative details’ [to which the index] referred . . . would

reveal the identity or otherwise implicate the privacy interests of

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any third party,” and noting that on remand “the district court

may review the disputed documents in camera in order to make

this determination”).

IV 

One final note. At oral argument, Justice Department

counsel suggested that, rather than producing the requested

documents, the Department might be able to provide the

plaintiffs with more of the data they are really interested in

without disclosing information that could intrude upon personal

privacy. This might include, counsel suggested, information

such as the nature of the charges in all 255 cases on the

government’s list, whether suppression motions were filed in

those cases, and the outcome of both the motions and the

prosecutions. See Oral Arg. Recording 22:15-:33; 29:46-31:28. 

 This is an interesting offer, in part because it could require

the Department to provide certain information -- by using the

docket information and PACER to find the underlying

documents, and then extracting information from those

documents and creating a summary document -- that the

plaintiffs might not be able to obtain through a FOIA request. 

See Forsham v. Harris, 445 U.S. 169, 186 (1980) (noting that

FOIA does not “impose[] [any] duty on the agency to create

records”). As such, it might provide the basis for a settlement

of this case. But it is not a suggestion that we can consider on

this appeal. Among other things, it was raised neither in the

Department’s appellate briefs nor -- to the best of our knowledge

-- in the district court proceedings.

V

We affirm that portion of the district court’s decision

directing disclosure of docket information from criminal cases

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in which the government prosecuted individuals after judges

granted applications for cell phone location data without

determining probable cause, and in which those individuals were

ultimately convicted or entered public guilty pleas. We vacate

and remand the remainder of the district court’s decision for that

court to develop the factual information discussed in Part III

above and, thereafter, to reconsider the appropriate disposition

of the remaining aspects of the case.

So ordered.

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