The recent settlement between the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Pork Producers Council, and the EPA will prevent the government from releasing personal data under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Farm Bureau's lead attorney Danielle Quist tells Brownfield the appeals court didn't mince words and told the EPA it overstepped its authority. She reports, "The case had been sent back to the district court in Minnesota, and the question that would have been before that court was how or whether to issue a permanent injunction so that EPA couldn't release the personal information, so this settlement eliminates the need for us to go to court and we were able to spell out exactly what information should and should not be released."
Now, the EPA can only release the city, county, five-digit zip code, and permit status of a farm operation. The EPA had released the names, phone numbers, email addresses, and GPS coordinates of more than 100-thousand farmers to several environmental activist groups.
Quist tells Brownfield it's difficult to assess the damage to farmers where personal data was compromised. She says, "It's kind of, in some sense, a hollow victory because that information did go out and part of the settlement, and before when EPA realized they had made errors, was to get the information back from the three initial FOIA requesters but we have no guarantee that they didn't already share that information."
Quist says the initial FOIA requests came from the Natural Resources Defense Council, Earth Justice, and the Pew Charitable Trust. She says six or seven more were filed later.
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