Opinion ID: 149114
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Was any Source a Record Under the Act?

Text: We now turn to whether any of the sources Thompson named qualifies as a record which is contained in a system of records. 5 U.S.C. § 552a(b). The first source, Thompson's own complaint, presents the closest question because it became part of the agency's record of the investigation. The district court, however, found she did not retrieve her complaint from the agency's system of records when composing her letters to the USDA. Relying upon our opinion in Bartel v. FAA, 725 F.2d 1403 (1984), Armstrong argues once Thompson's complaint became an agency record the Privacy Act prohibited her from repeating its contents. But for the cited decision, this argument might seem far-fetched. In that case one Bartel, an employee of the Federal Aviation Administration, had apparently accessed agency records improperly, prompting Vincent, another employee, to investigate Bartel's conduct. Vincent collected documents and created a Report of Investigation. Several months later, after learning Bartel was seeking reemployment within the agency, Vincent sent letters to the persons whose files Bartel had accessed, advising them of the investigation and of its findings. 725 F.2d at 1405-06. Bartel sued the FAA under the Privacy Act, arguing the letters disclosed a record, viz., the Report of Investigation, contained in a system of records. 5 U.S.C. § 552a(b). The evidence in the case was entirely silent as to whether Vincent ever examinedand therefore, actually retrievedthe Report of Investigation before he composed the letters. 725 F.2d at 1408. We proposed an exception to the general rule requiring the plaintiff to prove a record was actually retrieved, suggesting Vincent may have violated the Privacy Act even if he recalled from memory the contents of the report he had created for inclusion in the agency's record. We narrowly tethered the exception, however, to the facts of that case, in which the disclosing agency employee had ordered the investigation which resulted in the [report], made a putative determination of wrongdoing based on the investigation, and disclosed that putative determination in letters purporting to report an official agency determination. 725 F.2d at 1411. We also explained that, 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. Id. Cf. Doe v. Dep't of Veterans Affairs, 519 F.3d 456, 460-63 (8th Cir.2008) (distinguishing Bartel because doctor who disclosed information in plaintiff's medical record had learned the information directly from plaintiff and not from government system for collecting information). The exception we suggested in Bartel does not extend to this case, in which Thompson neither acquired the information contained in her initial complaint in any way related to a record, as an investigator might have done, nor used the record in her work for the agency. Because Armstrong has not shown that Thompson retrieved the record containing her complaint before composing the letters to the USDA, Thompson's disclosure in the letters of information she had also included in her complaint did not violate the Privacy Act. Nor does a disclosure from any of the other identified sources constitute a violation. There is no evidence Thompson's observations and speculation or those of others, or information from the rumor-mill, 610 F.Supp.2d at 71, are part of and were retrieved from any record which is contained in a system of records.