Opinion ID: 697751
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Exemption 7(E): Information Likely to Disclose a Law

Text: Enforcement Technique 56 The government appeals from the denial of its sole request under Exemption 7(E), to withhold a portion of FSM Doc. 42. 9 The district court denied the request because the law enforcement technique at issue, a pretext phone call, would leap to the mind of the most simpleminded investigator. 761 F.Supp. at 1450. The district court's decision is supported by holdings from district courts of the District of Columbia Circuit, that Exemption 7(E) only exempts investigative techniques not generally known to the public. National Sec. Archive v. FBI, 759 F.Supp. 872, 885 (D.D.C.1991); Albuquerque Publishing Co. v. Department of Justice, 726 F.Supp. 851, 857 (D.D.C.1989). 57 We agree with these courts' reasoning, and adopt it as the law of this Circuit. It would not serve the purposes of FOIA to allow the government to withhold information to keep secret an investigative technique that is routine and generally known. Accordingly, the district court did not err in applying a routine-technique exception to Exemption 7(E). We find no error in the court's finding that a pretext phone call constitutes an investigative technique generally known to the public. 58 We are not persuaded by the government's argument that the technique at issue is more precise, namely, the use of the identity of a particular individual, Mario Savio, as the pretext. This argument proves too much. If we were to follow such reasoning, the government could withhold information under Exemption 7(E) under any circumstances, no matter how obvious the investigative practice at issue, simply by saying that the investigative technique at issue is not the practice but the application of the practice to the particular facts underlying that FOIA request.