Court Slams FBI For
Saying It's Okay For The Federal Government To Lie To A Court
A few months back, we pointed out how the EFF had discovered
that the FBI was extremely arbitrary in how it redacted
information on Freedom of Information Act requests. There are
specific rules about what should be redacted and what should be
allowed. However, the EFF received the same documents from
separate requests, and found totally different sections
redacted. Not only did this suggest how arbitrary the process
was, it also allowed them to see some of what was redacted in
the "other" document -- and discover that it never should have
been redacted.
Now, the EFF is pointing to a recent ruling that shows the FBI
apparently feels it's free to go much further than just
arbitrary redacting. In a different case,
a district court has
slammed the FBI for both lying about what records it actually
had in response to an FOIA request by pretending certain records
did not exist (even though they did) and then redacting portions
of the document, claiming that they were outside the scope of
the request... when they were not. The court is clearly not
pleased. It also did not buy the government's silly claim that
revealing that the FBI lied would be a threat to national
security or that it's fine for the federal government to simply
lie to a court, in the name of "national security."
After court ordered the FBI to submit full versions of the
records in camera, along with a new declaration about the
agency's search, the FBI revealed for the first time that it had
materially and fundamentally mislead the court in its earlier
filings. The unaltered versions of the documents showed that the
information the agency had withheld as outside the scope was
actually well within the scope of the plaintiffs FOIA request.
The government also admitted it had a large number of additional
responsive documents that it hadn't told the plaintiffs or the
court about. Id. at 7-8.
If these revelations weren't bad enough, the FBI also argued
FOIA allows it to mislead the court where it believes revealing
information would compromise national security. Id. at 9. The
FBI also argued, that its initial representations to the Court
were not technically false because although the information
might have been factually responsive to the plaintiffs FOIA
request, it was legally nonresponsive. Id. at 9, n. 4 (emphasis
added).
The court noted, this argument is indefensible, id. at 9-10, and
held, the FOIA does not permit the government to withhold
responsive information from the court.
It really does seem like our federal government tends to believe
that there should be no oversight of it at all. It's almost as
if they feel that the basic principles of checks & balances
within the government is a nuisance which it can ignore.
