Opinion ID: 149114
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Rumor Mill

Text: Concerning the rumor mill, Armstrong states, The initial disclosure of the information from protected Investigation Records had to start with someone. Drawing upon the district court's observation that the rumor mill apparently goes virtually unchecked at TIGTA, 610 F.Supp.2d at 71; see also id. at 68 n. 3, Armstrong argues that TIGTA employees with information from the investigation must have unlawfully disclosed that information to other TIGTA employees, effectively feeding the rumor mill. To be sure, a person who fed the rumor mill the contents of a record that had been retrieved from a system of records may have violated the Privacy Act. In order to establish such a violation, however, Armstrong must prove someone disclosed information from a record, which he has not done. The Tenth Circuit explained as follows the central difficulty in allegations concerning office rumor mills: [T]he mere fact that information ... was well-known in [the] workplace does not give rise to an inference that such knowledge was widespread because of a disclosure.... [T]he Privacy Act does not prohibit disclosure of information or knowledge obtained from sources other than `records.' In particular, it does not prevent federal employees or officials from talkingeven gossipingabout anything of which they have non-record-based knowledge. Pippinger v. Rubin, 129 F.3d 519, 530-31 (1997) (citing Thomas v. Dep't of Energy, 719 F.2d 342, 345 (10th Cir.1983)). Again invoking a version of res ipsa, Armstrong argues someone must have violated the Privacy Act because others somehow found out information contained in a covered record. But his conclusion does not follow logically from his premise. First, Armstrong points to no information in the rumor mill that is not found in Thompson's letters to the USDA and, as we have seen, Thompson identified non-covered sources for all the information in those letters. Although she did identify the rumor mill as one source of information, she also identified another source for each bit of information. Because Thompson got all the information she disclosed from a lawful source other than the rumor mill, Armstrong's argument fails. Second, Armstrong admitted he himself disclosed some details of the investigation to others. In addition to his wife, he identified five coworkers at the TIGTA and two persons outside the TIGTA with whom he spoke about the investigation. Armstrong's disclosures to seven professional contacts could easily account for certain details finding their way into the TIGTA rumor mill. Cf. Lior Jacob Strahilevitz, A Social Networks Theory of Privacy, 72 U. CHI. L.REV. 919 (2005) (explaining why information disclosed to a coworker circulates more widely). Armstrong's mere assertion that the disclosures must have come from a record are not compelling in view of the sources Thompson identified and his own spilling of the beans.