Court Opinion

ID: 9473948
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:44:27.318664+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:50.143696
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The Privacy Act allows government agencies to exempt certain information from disclosure and amendment. The information, at issue here — the nonsensitive information included on that part of a 792 form that can be shown to a prisoner — cannot be exempted from disclosure. Nevertheless, the government argues that it can be exempted from amendment. Assuming, as the Act does, that amendment is on balance just and useful, I believe the present result is incorrect.
We must not allow ourselves to be blinded by the details of record-keeping. What is at issue here is information, not the location of certain pieces of paper. The law says that the nonsensitive information on a 792 form cannot be kept from a prisoner; indeed, the law requires that it be made available to him. If there is some reason to distinguish amendment from disclosure, so that information that cannot be exempted from disclosure can nonetheless be exempted from amendment, the burden would seem to be on the government to say what that reason is.
Unfortunately the majority has accepted an argument that is based on speculation and would justify shielding nearly all Justice Department records from amendment. The reason for avoiding disclosure of certain information is clear: in the case of criminal investigations, it would be indefensible to require law enforcement agencies to give up information that might undermine ongoing criminal investigations. But why avoid amendment of material that has been disclosed? The government relies not on the dangers of amendment itself — there aren’t any — but on the dangers that might accompany the hearing required when the government refuses to amend. For if there were a hearing, according to the government, other information about ongoing investigations might be disclosed.
A more speculative argument is hard to imagine. The information relevant to the question of cooperation is information about the behavior of the prisoner, and there is no reason why a hearing could not be limited to such evidence. In allowing the government to win on that argument, the majority is inviting it to insulate from amendment a whole body of information only tangentially related to anything sensitive. Today’s holding would allow agencies to classify information not on the basis of content but on the basis of the sensitivity of information that might be called for in a hearing about amendment. If the courts are anxious to take an agency’s word for what might be disclosed at such a hearing, it is difficult to imagine any information held by a law enforcement agency that will not be exempt from amendment.
Nothing terrible will happen in the particular case; it seems to me that Wentz is unlikely to be able to prove something so vague as cooperation. But the force of the *340statute is further eroded. I therefore respectfully dissent.