Rather, Critical Mass requires that a requester demonstrate that the voluntarily submitted information is not customarily disclosed by the requester to the public. The proposal, on the other hand, imposes the burden of describing the circumstances of the voluntary submission on every submission even though a Commission determination on a voluntary submission will only be made in the rare instance when such information is requested and the documents are not protected by one of the other statutory FOIA exemptions. Permitting submitters to provide factual support after a FOIA request is made in order to substantiate that the submission was made voluntarily provides the Commission with sufficient information for its determination. In short, requesters should only have to satisfy the Critical Mass standard, when and if, the information is requested, but not protected from disclosure by one of the other FOIA exemptions. The proposal to require requesters to stamp every page voluntarily submitted with a designation noting as such is also extremely burdensome.
Submissions routinely amount to hundreds of pages, and often comprise thousands of pages.
Accordingly, SIA does not support the proposed five-year expiration on confidential treatment requests, and the requirements to describe the circumstances under which information is being voluntarily submitted and to stamp every page voluntarily submitted. SIA urges the SEC to reconsider these proposals in light of the substantial burdens that would be placed on the industry. The Securities Industry Association brings together the shared interests of more than 740 securities firms throughout North America to accomplish common goals. The U.S. securities industry manages the accounts of more than 50-million investors directly and tens of millions of investors indirectly through corporate, thrift and pension plans.