Commerce Says DC Circuit's EPIC Ruling Shows VTDigger Lacks Standing on Privacy
Last month's D.C. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals decision in Electronic Privacy Information Center v. Department of Commerce and Bureau of the Census confirms that VTDigger lacks standing to bring a Section 208 challenge against DOC on FirstNet privacy, the…
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department said last week in a letter (in Pacer) to the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. The local news publication claimed that, under Section 208 of the E-Government Act, DOC must prepare a "Privacy Impact Assessment" for FirstNet. “Plaintiffs urge that they have standing to bring a challenge under Section 208 based on the kind of informational injury the D.C. Circuit rejected” in the EPIC case, Commerce said. The D.C. Circuit expressly ‘reject[ed] the possibility that §208 can support an informational injury theory ... in the absence of a colorable privacy harm of the type that Congress sought to prevent through the E-Government Act’ on the ground that ‘Section 208 was not designed to vest a general right to information in the public.’”