Opinion ID: 200462
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Disclosure and System of Records

Text: 34 The district dismissed Orekoya's claims concerning Agent Walsh's disclosure on the basis that USSS did not maintain a system of records concerning immigration status and Walsh therefore did not rely on any USSS record about plaintiff's citizenship. The plaintiff alleges that Agent Walsh called the INS and obtained information from the INS system of records, and then disclosed the information to BNE, Orekoya's employer, without Orekoya's consent. Similarly, as to USSS Agent Mooney, the court concluded that if he disclosed to BNE information from FBI files about Orekoya's prior arrest for unarmed robbery, that was not an actionable disclosure. 35 We hold that the unauthorized disclosure by one agency of protected information obtained from a record in another agency's system is a prohibited disclosure under the Act, unless the disclosure falls within the statutory exceptions. We stress that the issue is not the disclosure by one agency to another, but the disclosure by the second agency to a member of the public. We reject the district court's reading on the grounds that it is contrary to the plain language of § 552a(b) and would defeat the purposes of the Act. The statute says that no agency shall disclose any record which is contained in  a system of records. 5 U.S.C. § 552a(b) (emphasis added). A system of records is defined as a group of any records under the control of any agency. Id. § 552a(a)(5). The statute also prohibits unauthorized disclosure to another agency. Id. The language does not support the view that an agency may immunize itself from liability by obtaining information from a different agency's system of records and then saying its further unauthorized disclosure is protected because its own system of records was not the original source. Such a reading would create a tremendous loophole in privacy protection, one surely not intended by Congress. 36 Even if the initial disclosure by an agency from its own system of records (here the INS) to another agency (here the USSS) were within one of the exceptions, see, e.g., § 552a(b)(7) (permitting disclosures between agencies for a civil or criminal law enforcement activity upon a written request), that would not permit the recipient agency to then make an unauthorized disclosure to a third party if the latter disclosure did not itself fall within an exception. The Ninth Circuit reached a similar conclusion in Wilborn v. Department of Health & Human Services, 49 F.3d 597, 601 (9th Cir.1994). 37