Do non-US citizens have a privacy interest under FOIA?
Asked by Michael Morisy on January 25, 2015.
2 answers from John Hawkinson and Allan Blutstein.
Related but not directly on point is the Supreme Court’s April 2013 decision in McBurney v. Young, No. 12-17, see http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/mcburney-v-young/ which held that non-Virginia residents do not have the right to file state FOIA requests under Virginia’s FOIA law.
I would recommend reading it with an eye to this question.
Under FOIA, foreign nationals are accorded the same privacy rights as U.S. citizens. The case law on this is clear-cut, as set forth in DOJ’s FOIA Guide:
See Shaw v. United States Dep’t of State, 559 F. Supp. 1053, 1067 (D.D.C. 1983); see also United States Dep’t of State v. Ray, 502 U.S. 164 (1991) (applying traditional analysis of privacy interests under FOIA to Haitian nationals); Ctr. for Nat’l Sec. Studies v. United States Dep’t of Justice, 215 F. Supp. 2d 94, 105-06 (D.D.C. 2002); (recognizing, without discussion, the privacy rights of post-9/11 detainees who were unlawfully in the United States) (Exemption 7(C)), aff’d on other grounds, 331 F.3d 918 (D.C. Cir. 2003), cert. denied, 124 S. Ct. 1041 (2004); Schiller v. INS, 205 F. Supp. 2d 648, 662 (W.D. Tex. 2002) (finding that “[a]liens [and] their families . . . have a strong privacy interest in nondisclosure of their names, addresses, and other information which could lead to revelation of their identities”) (Exemption 7(C)); Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Reno, No. 00-0723, 2001 WL 1902811, at *8 (D.D.C. Mar. 30, 2001) (protecting asylum application filed on behalf of Cuban Elian Gonzalez); Hemenway, 601 F. Supp. at 1005-07 (according Exemption 6 protection to citizenship information regarding news correspondents accredited to attend State Department press briefings).