Yes, it looks like this: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6553646-Socialmediamonitoring.html#d... will be an excellent case to limit the government's ability to assert various forms of secrecy.
The FOIA could be filed in the Northern District of California, in order to ensure that this precedent is applicable. While in the last 3 years, we have seen a few examples of judges trying to interfere with President Trump's actions by filing nation-wide injunctions, the general rule is that a given Federal District Judge's authority is limited to the district he works in. There are exceptions, and they are vague enough to explain what this interference works with. Maybe the judge merely needs to issue a "finding", as phony as it might be.
This https://www.justice.gov/oip/blog/foia-update-oip-guidance-privacy-glomarizat... deals with the concept of "Glomarization", relating to a 1970' case: From paragraph 2:
"Specifically, a FOIA request seeking records which would indicate that a particular political figure, prominent businessman or even just an ordinary citizen has been the subject of a law enforcement investigation may require an agency to flatly refuse to confirm or deny whether such records exist. Such an extraordinary response can be justified only when the confirmation or denial of the existence of responsive records would, in and of itself, reveal exempt information. See FOIA Update, Spring 1983, at 5. This response, colloquially known as a "Glomar denial" or "Glomarization," was first judicially recognized in the national security context, see Phillippi v. CIA, 546 F.2d 1009, 1013 (D.C. Cir. 1976) (raising issue of whether CIA could refuse to confirm or deny its ties to Howard Hughes' submarine retrieval ship, the Glomar Explorer), but it surely is applicable elsewhere.""STIGMATIZING CONNOTATIONThe application of "Glomarization" in the privacy context is appropriate because disclosure of the mere fact that an individual is mentioned in an agency's law enforcement files carries a stigmatizing connotation, one certainly cognizable under FOIA Exemption 7(C), 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(C).See, e.g., Fund for Constitutional Government v. National Archives & Records Service, 656 F.2d 856, 865 (D.C. Cir. 1981) ("The disclosure of [the fact that specific individuals were the subjects of a criminal investigation] would produce the unwarranted result of placing the named individuals in the position of having to defend their conduct in the public forum outside of the procedural protections normally afforded the accused in criminal proceedings."); Baez v. Department of Justice, 647 F.2d 1328, 1338 (D.C. Cir. 1980) ("There can be no clearer example an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy than to release to the public that another individual was the subject of an FBI investigation."); see also Miller v. Bell, 661 F.2d 623, 631 32 (7th Cir. 1981) (identities of individuals merely mentioned in law enforcement records protected), cert. denied sub nom. Miller v. Webster, 456 U.S. 960 (1982); Maroscia v. Levi, 569 F.2d 1000, 1002 (7th Cir. 1977) (same)." [end of long quote]
I believe that the Feds should not be able to use this exception to block the release of the content of the Cypherpunks email data: The reason is that they did not suck up this data for the specific purpose of a "law enforcement investigation", and certainly not of a specific person. And this information was originally shared among hundreds (eventually thousands?) of people (the CP subscribers) that the government WASN'T investigating. A subscriber's mere participation in the CP email list should not be labellable as being "stigmatizing".
And presumably, this monitoring had been going on since shortly after the CP list began operating. The fact that some people on the list may eventually have been investigated doesn't mean that the information collection was related to them. And, the fact that the CP list monitoring occurred does not disclose that any of these subscribers were (or were not) under investigation at the time, or later.
And, this was not a "covert" operation: From the Feds' end, it would have been as simple as subscribing to the CP email list, and receiving the resulting emails, just as all of us do, and others previously did. If that information was later on used, by them, for investigatory purposes, that wouldn't have affected the initial collection process.
I believe that we can label the CP email list as being the "social media" of the 1990's. An email list was the tool people had to participate in joint discussions, long before the more-refined Facebook and Twitter. The "tool" necessary to collect that data, at the time, would have been simple: Just an email account, subscribed to the CP email list feeds. This Northern District of California https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191119/13132743414/judge-says-fbi-cant-k... case looks like it will support an FOIA case for the disclosure of the product of that monitoring.
This request should go to, at least, the FBI and the NSA. Now, the NSA was not (in 1995) supposed to collect data not crossing international boundaries, but even if only a single subscriber to the CP list was outside the US, that would 'authorize' the NSA to collect the specific email sent to him. And, that person would not have been 'under investigation'; they would simply have been receiving CP list emails. So, the Glomar exception shouldn't apply. And the NSA collected "everything", not simply specific wanted information. So I don't think that the label "covert" applies to this, or a specific "investigation".
The NSA should still have this data: Emails take merely a very tiny amount of hard-drive space. The entire CP email archive could probably fit on 1/100.000 of the largest hard drive available today. Three would have been no reason to erase any of it.
I can understand a reason to, initially, limit the request to the time period 1995-1996. And, probably there should be a FOIA request that is so limited. But we don't merely want to get all the original data, thus allowing us to recreate what the CP email Archive should have revealed: We want to find evidence of the forgery, if that is available. Perhaps evidence of that would be revealed if we also request all email records of the relatively few people who were involved in the keeping of the data, and later the generation of the CP email Archive. And yes, that will include all their private emails, not involved with the CP list, if those emails crossed international borders.
Jim Bell
On Saturday, November 23, 2019, 10:17:55 PM PST, jim bell
To Ryan Carboni, It looks like you are familiar with the practice of writing and filing Freedom of Information Act requests. https://www.muckrock.com/accounts/profile/ryaz/
Given that these requests can take a long time, I think it would be appropriate to make such a filing for any Cyperpunks mailing list emails, especially but not limited to those from 1995-1996. Naturally, we will want the output on a computer readable format, such as writable CD, writable DVD, or some other downloadable file system.
We will probably want to compare these emails from those that will be obtained by other sources. What do you think? Would you help this process? Can you write the FOIA request? Thank you.
Jim Bell e