Opinion ID: 430594
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Disclosure of a Record

Text: 12 The appellees contend that this statutory provision does not apply to the letters to which Bartel objects because the information they contained was not physically retrieved from the ROI by Vincent, but rather came from his independent knowledge of the investigation and its results. 8 See Brief for Appellees, at 15. Therefore, appellees argue, the letters were not disclosures of records within the meaning of the Act, but rather were only disclosures of information within Vincent's personal knowledge. Id. at 13. 13 The Act defines record as:any item, collection, or grouping of information about an individual that is maintained by an agency, including, but not limited to, his education, financial transactions, medical history, and criminal or employment history and that contains his name, or the identifying number, symbol, or other identifying particular assigned to the individual, such as a finger or voice print or photograph. 14 5 U.S.C. Sec. 552a(a)(4). 9 It is of course obvious that the letters were not themselves agency records. On the other hand, it is not disputed that the Bartel ROI referred to in the letters is a record subject to the disclosure provisions of the Act. 10 Because we find that under the peculiar circumstances of this case, the letters did in fact communicate sensitive information contained in the ROI--specifically, that Bartel's conduct was the subject of an official agency investigation, that he acted improperly, and that he may have violated the Privacy Act--we conclude that the Act's disclosure protections may have been triggered. 15 Courts up to now have unanimously agreed that the Act covers more than the mere physical dissemination of records (or copies) but that it does not necessarily cover disclosure of information merely because the information happens to be contained in the records. The line they draw is that where no statutory exception applies, the Act prohibits nonconsensual disclosure of any information that has been retrieved from a protected record. See, e.g., Thomas v. United States Department of Energy, 719 F.2d 342 (10th Cir.1983); Jackson v. Veterans Administration, 503 F.Supp. 653, 656 (N.D.Ill.1980); Savarese v. United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 479 F.Supp. 304, 307 (N.D.Ga.1979), aff'd mem. sub nom. Savarese v. Harris, 620 F.2d 298 (5th Cir.1980), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 1078, 101 S.Ct. 858, 66 L.Ed.2d 801 (1981). The appellees urge that this line would require an affirmance of the dismissal of Bartel's Privacy Act claim. 16 We find the appellees' position problematic for two reasons. First, even if we adopted the view that the Act covers only information physically retrieved from a record, there would still be a material issue of fact on the evidence before us as to whether Vincent gained the information disclosed in his letters by reading the ROI. The record of this case is entirely silent as to whether Vincent ever examined the ROI. Rather than specifically assert, by way of affidavits or otherwise, that he did not examine it, the appellees instead argue that Vincent's letters merely render ... 'a conclusory statement from [his] memory.'  Brief for Appellees, at 14 (quoting Doyle v. Behan, 670 F.2d 535, 539 (5th Cir.1982)). The appellees, however, omit from the quoted passage its explicit recognition that the district court in Doyle had found a system of records had not been utilized ... to gather the information conveyed. Doyle, 670 F.2d at 639. Here, on the other hand, we know only that Vincent made a determination based on the investigation that Bartel should be officially reprimanded. Instead of reprimanding Bartel, who was no longer an FAA employee, he decided the best course of action was to inform those whose files were disclosed of Bartel's improper conduct, in effect, disclosing a summary of the ROI. We do not know if Vincent ever consulted the file and, if so, when, in relation to the sending of the letters. Thus, we find it far from clear that what the appellees call a conclusory statement, reporting that Bartel acted improperly and may have violated the Privacy Act, did not in fact constitute information Vincent derived from reading the ROI. At the least, it is a matter requiring further development of the facts. 17 In addition, we disagree with appellees that all information not retrieved from a record is personal knowledge falling outside of the Privacy Act's protection. Although they cite several cases from other circuits to support their position, 11 none involved the peculiar set of circumstances present here: disclosure by an agency official of his official determination made on the basis of an investigation which generated a protected personnel record. For example, in Jackson, 503 F.Supp. 653, the court explicitly found that the official alleged to have divulged protected information had knowledge of the facts disclosed independent of any record in the plaintiff's OPF [personnel file] or elsewhere. Id. at 656 (emphasis supplied). More importantly, this case demonstrates that an absolute policy of limiting the Act's coverage to information physically retrieved from a record would make little sense in terms of its underlying purpose. Nor does the Act's language require such a hypertechnical interpretation. The Privacy Act forbids nonconsensual disclosure of records by any means of communication, 5 U.S.C. Sec. 552a(b), and it requires that where disclosure is permitted, it must be accurate and complete. 5 U.S.C. Sec. 552a(e)(6). Under the appellees' suggested standard, an official could circumvent both requirements with respect to a record he himself initiated by simply not reviewing it before reporting its contents or conclusions. Ironically, the Act would prohibit dissemination where such an official reviews a record in order to ensure the accuracy of a disclosure, but inadvertently mischaracterizes it, yet would immunize dissemination of the same inaccurate information if the official did not even bother to check the disclosure against the record. Thus, a rigid adherence to the retrieval standard makes little sense in this case, whatever its merits as a guideline in other Privacy Act situations. 18 Therefore, despite dicta from other circuits, we decline to rule, in the factual context of this case, that the Act's coverage is restricted to information directly retrieved from a tangible recording. The most commonly cited dicta of this genre is found in Savarese, 479 F.Supp. 304, and was explicitly premised on the conclusion that: 19 Congress had as its purpose the control of the unbridled use of highly sophisticated and centralized information collecting technology. The capacity of computers and related systems to collect and distribute great masses of personal information clearly poses a threat that the Privacy Act seeks to remedy. That problem is not, however, present in this action. On the contrary, there was no utilization whatsoever of such an information system to retrieve the information at issue in this case. 20 Id. at 308. It was also premised, in part, on the concern that [t]he interpretation contended for ...--that section 552a(b) is violated if agency personnel disclose information they possess by means other than retrieval from a system of records if they know or have reason to believe that the information may also be found in a record within a system of records--would create an intolerable burden. Olberding v. United States Department of Defense, 709 F.2d 621, 622 (8th Cir.1983). We assume the intolerable burden refers primarily to situations, unlike this one, where information was inadvertently leaked from a record, became part of general office knowledge, and some time later was disclosed purportedly as a matter within the discloser's personal knowledge. 21 We do not take issue with the importance of either concern in the interpretation of the Act. But, neither do we think those rationales support reading out of the Act's coverage the situation we may be dealing with here, where an agency official uses the government's sophisticated ... information collecting methods to acquire personal information for inclusion in a record and then discloses that information in an unauthorized fashion without actually physically retrieving it from the record system. Threats to privacy from the government's record-keeping emanate not only from the ease of retrieval, but also from the ease of collection and utilization of vast amounts of personal information. 12 Given this broad lens view of privacy protection which Congress embraced, 13 the Savarese rationale is consistent with extension of the Act's prohibition to nonconsensual disclosure of information as closely connected to the maintenance 14 of a record as the situation here suggests, even absent physical retrieval from a tangible recording. And, in contrast to disclosures of general office knowledge, it would hardly seem an intolerable burden to restrict an agency official's discretion to disclose information in a record that he may not have read but that he had a primary role in creating and using, where it was because of that record-related role that he acquired the information in the first place. Indeed, a different interpretation would deprive the Act of all meaningful protection of privacy. 15 22 In this case, the details of Vincent's precise relationship to the creation and use of the Bartel investigation record are not fully known. The record before the district court indicates, however, that Vincent ordered the investigation which resulted in the Bartel ROI, made a putative determination of wrongdoing based on the investigation, and disclosed that putative determination in letters purporting to report an official agency determination. Absent additional information, it seems reasonable to infer that only because of Vincent's request for that investigation and his use of it to determine that a reprimand was appropriate, was he able to state in his letter that an investigation conducted by the Air Transportation Security Division ... indicates that Mr. Richard Bartel ... improperly obtained records pertaining to you. The bald assertion by the appellees that [p]lainly, appellee Vincent knew of the possible impropriety of appellant's intrusion long before, and independent of, the formal investigation and the resulting investigative file, see Brief for Appellees at 14, is irrelevant. The Vincent letters on their face purport to repeat findings and conclusions made as a result of that investigation. In short, if the facts are as Bartel states, we cannot agree with appellees that the Privacy Act does not cover the sending of these letters because they did not constitute communication of a protected record. 23