Court Opinion

ID: 9474446
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:57:24.838441+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:05.322597
License: Public Domain

GINSBURG, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The court attributes to the Privacy Act a rigidity I do not believe Congress intended. I therefore dissent.
The Act instructs each agency to maintain all records used in making determinations about any individual “with such accuracy ... and completeness as is reasonably necessary to assure fairness to the individual.” 5 U.S.C. § 552a(e)(5). This case concerns the application of that instruction to a situation in which an experienced security agent and the individual he interviewed for a position recounted differently what the interviewee said at an interview. If the agency is to keep a record of the interview, the court holds, the agency must decide where “the truth” lies; and if the agency accepts its security agent’s version, the district court, on request of the interviewee, must redetermine the matter de novo. The agency may not, in the majority’s view, place both versions in the record without explicitly stating that it believes the agent’s version to be accurate.1 In succession, the majority then states, the district court must independently decide through de novo review, which account is true, and which one is false.
Congress, in my judgment, did not so straitjacket the agency. If the agency finds from the record, as the State Department did here, that “there is no reason to question the [agent’s] integrity,” Joint Appendix (J.A.) 64, then I think it a fair accommodation, fully consistent with the Act’s terms and purposes, simply to report the divergent accounts. I agree with the district judge that, in the circumstances this case presents, accuracy is best served, not by labeling one account the whole truth, and the other a lie, but by reporting correctly the contradictory accounts of the two sole participants in the episode in question. See Doe v. United States, No. 83-951 (D.D.C. July 6, 1984).
Doe did urge a matter which, if borne out, would have placed her case in a very different posture. She accused the interviewing agent of “sexual misconduct” in the course of the interview and implied that her reaction caused the agent to distort and falsify the interview report. The State Department promptly investigated and found Doe’s allegations of sexual misconduct on the part of the agent to be meritless. Doe did not further pursue those misconduct allegations. Nor did she suggest any other reason to doubt the veracity, motives or competence of the interviewer. The security agent was experienced in his work and apparently had proved reliable in the past. The State Department, as earlier observed, explicitly determined that there was no cause to question his integrity.
Having made that critical determination, the Department, I believe, was not required by the Privacy Act to engage in an adversarial proceeding over the interview, yielding a decision — much in the manner of a *918judge or jury — for one side or the other. See majority opinion (maj. op.) at 912-13. I cannot locate in the Act the unyielding direction the majority finds there requiring the agency always to adjudicate so as to record truth, rather than to adjust a file equitably to reveal genuine ambiguity. As the district court several times observed, the only charge Congress gave the agencies is to maintain records “with such accuracy ... as is reasonably necessary to assure fairness” to the individuals involved. 5 U.S.C. § 552a(e)(5). And I am satisfied that the State Department fulfilled that charge in Doe’s case. Cf Savarese v. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 479 F.Supp. 304, 306 (N.D.Ga.1979) (“if the court determines that the agency has done what is reasonable in assuring the accuracy of the information included, no more is required”), aff'd mem., 620 F.2d 298 (5th Cir.1980), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 1078, 101 S.Ct. 858, 66 L.Ed.2d 801 (1981); Smiertka v. Department of the Treasury, 447 F.Supp. 221, 226 n. 35 (D.D.C.1978) (key term in Act is “reasonableness”; agency’s compliance with this standard is achieved by “balancing all of the relevant competing interests at stake”), remanded on other grounds, 604 F.2d 698 (D.C.Cir.1979).
I do not “excus[e] the Department from its duty of accuracy.” Maj. op. at 915. I simply do not share the majority’s enthusiasm for forcing an agency to declare definite and certain things that are not. Had the Department embraced its agent’s account as “truth” and allowed Doe to supplement the record with an account the Department found “false,” the Department would have accorded Doe the “congres-sionally mandated right,” id., advertised by the majority. I find no impermissible avoidance in the Department’s reluctance to take that course.
The district court, it bears emphasis, recognized that generally, Privacy Act cases do not lend themselves to disposition by summary judgment; in the typical case, the district court observed, it is possible to make a determination as to the accuracy of filed material. See Doe, supra, slip op. at 10, 11. The district court ruled narrowly and only on the case of an unwitnessed, untaped interview, in which what the interviewee said is indeed “unknowable” by third persons. See maj. op at 912. The “whole truth” in such cases, may well include some part of what each of the two participants recounted, so that a file setting out both versions may be more accurate than a record embracing only one side’s story.
In any event, I do not believe that the district court’s ruling — narrowly tied as it was to a security agent’s report of words spoken at an interview meeting unattended by any third person — opens the floodgates to unchecked government collection and retention of “unsubstantiated rumors” or “McCarthyesque innuendo.” Id. at 911, 912.2 So long as close case-by-case court review is available, “sloppy or willfully inaccurate” record keeping, id. at 916, can be held at bay.
The court has decided a novel case under the Privacy Act. In my judgment, it has done so in a way Congress did not order, one likely to impel agencies almost always to “opt[] for [their] agent’s side of the *919story.” Id. at 913.3 The truth about Doe’s words is “unknowable” to persons other than Doe and the security agent. It may lie in the middle ground between the divergent accounts affirmed by two witnesses.4 I do not regard a record as inadequate or inaccurate under the Privacy Act if it simply indicates that prospect. I therefore dissent.

. The court properly avoided dictating "any particular procedures" to the agency. See majority opinion (maj. op.) at 915. Doe, in contrast, cast her entire case in a procedural frame. She emphasized here and in the district court that “[tjhis case does not involve the truth or falsity of the various charges and counter-charges.” Instead, she urged, the issue is the quality of investigation an agency must undertake before placing "damaging allegations in a person’s files.” Appellant’s Brief at 14; see Doe v. United States, No. 83-951, slip op. at 8 (D.D.C. July 6, 1984). She described as essential an "extensive [agency] investigation,” Appellant’s Brief at 32, which would stretch beyond Doe and the security agent to reach other individuals, "including physicians who might have had information about [Doe’s] motives.” Doe, supra, slip op. at 8. Because the Department of State did not so investigate, Doe concluded, she is entitled to an order, preferably here and now, directing the Department to delete the agent’s report. See Appellant’s Brief at 57. See also infra note 3.

. I do not fully grasp the relevant distinction apparently drawn by the court, see maj. op. at 915-916, between statements made by third parties and statements made by the job seeker. The former, the court suggests, may fall outside this decision’s rule of double credibility determinations (first by the agency, then de novo by the district court). It is not clear why a security agent's rendition of what "neighbors” said is any less "the work of the agency’s own investigator” than is the agent’s account of what the job seeker said. Moreover, reports of what others said of an applicant seem to me at lease as vulnerable to distortion and falsification as reports of what the immediately concerned person stated. Furthermore, the grave concerns Congress expressed about, e.g., dubious informers and snooping neighbors, see H.R.Rep. No. 93-1416, 93d Cong., 2d Sess. 4-5 (1974), would appear to require particular vigilance — often independent verification of damaging information — when third party statements are collected. See Doe v. United States Civil Service Commission, 483 F.Supp. 539, 579-80 (S.D.N.Y.1980).

. Doe, it appears, has not prevailed on her "procedural rights" plea. See supra note 1. The court states that de novo judicial review is "broad and encompasses the consideration of new evidentiary matter,” maj. op. at 913; but as to the agency, the majority opinion merely suggests that the Department determine the credibility of Doe and the security agent through some process. Id. at 912.

. Cf. A. Strindberg, A Dream Play 48 (M. Meyer tr. 1973) (In an exchange on truth, the Philosophy Dean asks: “What is truth?” The Law Dean replies: "That which can be proved by two witnesses.”).