Wright v. FBI, No. 18-687, 2024 WL 4263867 (D.D.C. Sept. 23, 2024) (Chutkan, J.)
Date
Wright v. FBI, No. 18-687, 2024 WL 4263867 (D.D.C. Sept. 23, 2024) (Chutkan, J.)
Re: Request for fifteen categories of records
Disposition: Granting defendant’s motion for summary judgment
- Procedural Requirements, Searching for Responsive Records: The court relates that “[it] granted Defendant’s prior motion for summary judgment in every respect but one: ‘the adequacy of Defendant’s search for item 14.’” “‘Item 14 requested all records discussing mosques as six distinct categories: a) seats of government of Islam, b) arsenals to store weapons and ammunition, c) repositories to store food and water, d) fortresses or built with fortified construction, e) providing military style training, and f) potentially being used for armed insurrection against the U.S. government.’” “Originally, ‘the FBI searched for the word “mosque” on Sentinel’ – the Bureau’s electronic case management system – ‘but the search results contained over one million hits, covering a multitude of subject matters.’” “Plaintiff argued that ‘Defendant could refine its search by using keywords and Boolean operators (e.g., “mosque” + “arsenal” or “weapons”).’” “The court concluded that it was ‘at least possible that using the “and” operator could have significantly reduced the number of hits in a Sentinel search.’” “Accordingly, the court ordered Defendant to either explain ‘why a search using the Boolean operator “and” to link the word ‘mosque’ with keywords from item 14’s subparts is not possible,’ or to carry out such a search and submit ‘a declaration averring that (1) the search produced no responsive records, (2) the search produced responsive records and they have been produced to Plaintiff or withheld as exempt, or (3) the search returned so many hits that it would be unduly burdensome to review them all (with details on the number of hits and the estimated time it would take to review them).’” “Defendant has taken the latter path and sought summary judgment on this final pending issue.”
The court finds that “Defendant has complied with the court’s prior order and demonstrated that a search for item 14 of Plaintiff’s FOIA request would be unduly burdensome.” “Defendant’s declarant adequately explained why a Sentinel search for item 14, even using Boolean operators to the link the item’s keywords, would yield too many records to reasonably review for responsiveness.” “The declaration reports that Sentinel functionality allows for searches combining multiple keywords with Boolean operators.” “But even those refined searches turned up enormous numbers of ‘serials’ – the colloquial term for ‘[d]ocuments or sets of documents contained in an FBI file [and] serialized sequentially . . . for an investigative or administrative purpose.’” “Indeed, the ‘combined total for the serials identified while using the Boolean operators, which is 1,854,315, is higher than the number of serials identified only searching the term “mosque” because it’s possible for the same document to hit repeatedly across several of the search queries.’” “Moreover, because this kind of search ‘does not explore the relationship of the terms, but rather identifies serials where the selected terms simply both appear,’ Defendant would still need to review each of the serials identified by the search to determine whether it is responsive to Plaintiff’s FOIA request.” “The declaration estimates that if each serial takes five minutes to review, and a reviewer is paid $25.45 per hour, reviewing the records identified by the Boolean operators and keywords search ‘would take approximately 154,526 hours and would cost the government over 3.9 million dollars.’” “‘A search using only the term “mosque” on its own . . . would result in 1,062,851 serials, would take 88,570 hours to review for responsiveness, and cost the government over 2.2 million dollars.’” “Plaintiff does not contest that the responsiveness reviews corresponding to either Sentinel search would be unduly burdensome.” “And the court agrees with Defendant that such a search for responsive records would not be reasonable.” “The declaration is ‘detailed and nonconclusory’ in establishing that fact, and the court sees no reason to depart from the ‘presumption of good faith’ accorded to it.” “There is every reason to believe that Plaintiff’s alternative suggestion – the manual search of other records – would be even more time-consuming and expensive.” “FOIA does not require that burdensome search here.”
Court Decision Topic(s)
District Court opinions
Procedural Requirements, Searching for Responsive Records
Updated November 6, 2024