Schaerr v. U.S. DOJ

Plaintiff submitted a four-part FOIA request to six intelligence agencies requesting procedures the agencies must follow in regard to unmasking and upstreaming. The agencies each provided Glomar responses for parts 2 and 3 of the request, claiming exemptions under FOIA. Plaintiff sued, and both defendants and plaintiff made motions for summary judgment. The Court held that the FBI, NSA, and NSD did not conduct adequate searches for all parts of the FOIA request, but the ODNI, State, and the CIA did conduct adequate searches. Thus, “defendants’ motion is granted as to the Glomar responses they asserted pursuant to FOIA Exemptions 1 and 3 to parts 2 and 3 of plaintiff's FOIA requests and NSA's Glomar response to part 4 of the FOIA request. The motion is also granted with regard to the adequacy of the searches conducted by ODNI, State, and CIA. However, defendants' motion is denied, and plaintiff's motion is granted, as to the adequacy of the searches conducted by FBI, NSA, and NSD.” 435 F. Supp. 3d at 128.
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