Violations of these rights bring charges against the person who is IDed to have taken the video.
Videos should be archived, not destroyed.
Exemption 6
Personal privacy interests are protected by two provisions of the FOIA,
Exemptions 6 and 7(C). While the application of Exemption 7(C), discussed below, is
limited to information compiled for law enforcement purposes, Exemption 6 permits
the government to withhold all information about individuals in "personnel and
medical files and similar files" when the disclosure of such information "would
constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy." (1) These exemptions
are a vitally important part of the FOIA's statutory scheme, (2) but of course they
cannot be invoked to withhold from a requester information pertaining only to
himself. (3)
Initial Considerations
To warrant protection under Exemption 6, information must first meet its
threshold requirement; in other words, it must fall within the category of "personnel
and medical files and similar files." (4) Personnel and medical files are easily identified,
but there has not always been universal agreement about the meaning of the term
"similar files." Prior to 1982, judicial interpretations of that phrase varied
considerably and included a troublesome line of cases in the Court of Appeals for
the District of Columbia Circuit, commencing with Board of Trade v. Commodity
Futures Trading Commission, (5) which narrowly construed the term to encompass
only "intimate" personal details.
In 1982, the Supreme Court acted decisively to resolve this controversy once
and for all. In United States Department of State v. Washington Post Co., (6) it firmly
held, based upon a review of the legislative history of the FOIA, that Congress
intended the term to be interpreted broadly, rather than narrowly. (7) The Court
stated that the protection of an individual's privacy "surely was not intended to turn
upon the label of the file which contains the damaging information." (8) Rather, the
Court made clear that all information that "applies to a particular individual" meets
the threshold requirement for Exemption 6 protection. (9) This means, of course, that
this threshold is met if the information applies to any particular, identifiable
individual -- which makes it readily satisfied in all but the most unusual cases of
questionable identifiability. (10)
The D.C. Circuit, sitting en banc, subsequently reinforced the Supreme Court's
broad interpretation of this term by holding that a tape recording of the last words
of the Space Shuttle Challenger crew, which "reveal[ed] the sound and inflection of
the crew's voices during the last seconds of their lives . . . contains personal
information the release of which is subject to the balancing of the public gain
against the private harm at which it is purchased." (11) Not only did the D.C. Circuit
determine that "lexical" and "non-lexical" information are subject to identical
treatment under the FOIA, (12) it also concluded that Exemption 6 is equally applicable
to the "author" and the "subject" of a file. (13)
Once it has been established that information meets the threshold
requirement of Exemption 6, the focus of the inquiry turns to whether disclosure of
the records at issue "would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal
privacy." (14) This requires a balancing of the public's right to disclosure against the
individual's right to privacy. (15) First, it must be ascertained whether a protectible
privacy interest exists that would be threatened by disclosure. If no privacy interest
is found, further analysis is unnecessary and the information at issue must be
disclosed. (16)
On the other hand, if a privacy interest is found to exist, the public interest in
disclosure, if any, must be weighed against the privacy interest in nondisclosure. (17) If
no public interest exists, the information should be protected; as the D.C. Circuit has
observed, "something, even a modest privacy interest, outweighs nothing every
time." (18) Similarly, if the privacy interest outweighs the public interest, the
information should be withheld; if the opposite is found to be the case, the
information should be released. (19)
http://www.justice.gov/oip/foia-guide-2004-edition-exemption-6
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