Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/334

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DEPARTMENT OF STATE v. RAY Opinion of the Court

publicly with particular, named individuals. Although disclosure of such personal information constitutes only a de minimis invasion of privacy when the identities of the interviewees are unknown, the invasion of privacy becomes significant when the personal information is linked to particular interviewees. Cf. id., at 380–381. In addition, disclosure of the unredacted interview summaries would publicly identify the interviewees as people who cooperated with a State Department investigation of the Haitian Government’s compliance with its promise to the United States Government not to prosecute the returnees. The Court of Appeals failed to acknowledge the significance of this fact.12 As the State Department explains, disclosure of the interviewees’ identities could subject them or their families to “embarrassment in their social and community relationships.” App. 43. More importantly, this group of interviewees occupies a special status: They left their homeland in violation of Haitian law and are protected from prosecution by their government’s assurance to the State Department. Although the Department’s monitoring program indicates that that assurance has been fulfilled, it nevertheless remains true that the State Department considered the danger of mistreatment sufficiently real to necessitate that monitoring program. How significant the danger of mistreatment may now be is, of course, impossible to measure, 12 We emphasize, however, that we are not implying that disclosure of a list of names and other identifying information is inherently and always a significant threat to the privacy of the individuals on the list. Instead, we agree with the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that whether disclosure of a list of names is a “ ‘significant or a de minimis threat depends upon the characteristic(s) revealed by virtue of being on the particular list, and the consequences likely to ensue.’ ” National Assn. of Retired Federal Employees v. Horner, 279 U. S. App. D. C. 27, 31, 879 F. 2d 873, 877 (1989), cert. denied, 494 U. S. 1078 (1990). As discussed infra, disclosure of the interviewees’ names would be a significant invasion of their privacy because it would subject them to possible embarrassment and retaliatory action.