United States District Court Judge Gladys Kessler for the District of Columbia has ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to continue processing documents responsive to the Electronic Privacy Information Center's (EPIC) request for records concerning a joint DHS/DOD cyber security program but decided that the government was not entitled to an order allowing it to get documents back from EPIC if the government later decided that the document had been released in error.
More can be found at the Blog of the Legal Times.
As the Department of Justice should have known, one of the principal rules of FOIA is that a release to one is a release to all. Thus, a granting of a "clawback" to the government would have been unprecedented under the FOIA. The concession that Judge Kessler made to the government is that they don't have to make interim releases and can release documents once they are all done being reviewed pursuant to the FOIA.
There seemed to have a legal basis for the information being withdrawn to public.The government should hvae reviewed everything before disclosing it public.This cases could be prevented if the government will be very careful.
Posted by: Sunshine Coast Bookkeeping | April 04, 2013 at 11:39 AM