Federal Court Says Metadata is Public…
For the first time, a federal court has ruled that metadata — information related to the history, tracking or management of an electronic document — must be released if requested under the Freedom of Information Act. A federal judge in New York City made the ruling Monday in National Day Laborer Organizing Network v. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency.
National Day Laborer Organizing Network requested numerous records in electronic form from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. After significant delay, the agency provided the records, but did so by putting the them into a large, unsearchable PDF that lacked distinction within and lacked metadata. The court held that this was unacceptable.
The two major issues in this case were the format the records were provided in and the lack of metadata, such as file dates, names, attachment data and other identifying information. Regarding the first issue, the court agreed with the plaintiff's claim that the format was completely unusable because the more than 3,000 pages were not searchable and not defined — there was no way to discern the beginning and end of individual records. The court repeatedly criticized the government for its refusal to provide the records in a usable form, at one point referring to the government's claims as "lame."
Filed under: 3. Access law Tagged: Metadata
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