EPIC Challenges Justice Department’s Refusal to Search for Location Tracking Orders

EPIC has filed an amended complaint against the Justice Department, charging that the agency engages in a "pattern and practice" of violating the Freedom of Information Act. Earlier EPIC filed a FOIA lawsuit to compel the DOJ to disclose records about locational surveillance that the Supreme Court ruled was unconstitutional in Carpenter v. United States. EPIC first filed requests in 2017 to obtain copies of government applications to ISPs that require the disclosure of customers communications. After EPIC filed suit in August 2018, the DOJ refused to search for the records and claimed that it "does not track" the surveillance orders. EPIC now alleges that the DOJ has engaged in a pattern and practice that violates the FOIA. Federal agencies are required by law to search for records that are "reasonably described." EPIC wrote "agency's unlawful policy, pattern, and practice of refusing to conduct a search in response to reasonably described FOIA requests such as EPIC's will continue absent intervention by this Court." The case is EPIC v. DOJ, No. 18-1814 (D.D.C.).