Hillier v. CIA, No. 16-1836, 2018 WL 4354947 (D.D.C. September 12, 2018) (Friedrich, J.)

Hillier v. CIA, No. 16-1836, 2018 WL 4354947 (D.D.C. September 12, 2018) (Friedrich, J.)

Re:  Requester's requests for information about himself submitted to various agencies

Disposition:  Granting defendants' motion for summary judgment in part; denying without prejudice plaintiff's motion for summary judgment

• Litigation Considerations, Adequacy of Search: The court finds that the CIA's declaration was sufficient under "both the Privacy Act and the FOIA by properly describing a systematic approach to the CIA's search that first focused on publicly released records and then turned to unclassified documents that the agency might possess," and by identifying locations searched likely to have responsive records.  The court finds that DHS's declaration is not sufficiently detailed to explain "why it did not search specific systems that [the] requester has identified," while finding that searches at other components were adequate.  The court finds that the State Department adequately described its search, as the declaration "identifies who performed the searches, the search terms that were used, and the type of searches that were performed."