PPSA Asks Court to Compel Agencies to Search for Documents About Private Data Purchases from Accounts of 110 Members of Congress

​PPSA is asking a DC federal court to compel the top federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies to search for records related to how they acquire and use the private, personal information of 110 Members of Congress purchased from third-party data brokers.
 
In a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed in July, 2021, PPSA had asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Security Agency, the Department of Justice and the FBI, and the CIA for records related to the possible purchase and use of commercially available information on current and former members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.
 
The request covered such leading Members of Congress as House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, Ranking Member Jerry Nadler, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, Ranking Member Chuck Grassley, and former Members that included Vice President Kamala Harris and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
 
PPSA’s motion for summary judgment filed before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia confronts the assertion by these multiple agencies that to even search for responsive documents would harm national security.
 
PPSA’s motion notes that under FOIA, “agencies must acknowledge the existence of information responsive to a FOIA request and provide specific, non-conclusory justifications for withholding that information.” The agencies instead stonewalled this FOIA request by invoking the judge-created Glomar response, meant to be a rare exception to the general rule of disclosure, which allows the government to neither confirm nor deny the existence of such records.
 
“Requiring Defendants here to perform FOIA searches within the secrecy of their own silos does not, by itself, compel the automatic disclosure of any information whatsoever," PPSA declares in its motion. “[B]ecause the initial step of conducting an inter-agency search makes no such disclosure, their arguments are neither logical nor plausible justifications for shirking their duty to perform an internal search.”
 
The issue of government spying into the private, personal information of Members of Congress, tasked with oversight of these agencies, involve the serious potential for executive intimidation of the legislative branch. The ODNI recently declassified an internal document noting that commercially available information can be used to “facilitate blackmail, stalking, harassment, and public shaming.”
 
“The government doesn’t even want to entertain our question,” said Gene Schaerr, PPSA general counsel. “What do they have to hide?”

READ COURT SUMMARY HERE