Background
When a complainant requests disclosure of investigation records, it is common for the authority to withhold the entire document on the ground that "the record contains third parties' personal information." Our client received such a refusal, and Changchun represented the complainant in seeking its revocation.
The Issue — Can an Entire Document Be Withheld Because It Contains Personal Information?
Article 9(1)6 of the Information Disclosure Act makes personal information a ground for non-disclosure, but article 14 of the same Act requires "partial disclosure" where the disclosable and non-disclosable portions can be separated. The key question was whether blanket non-disclosure on personal information grounds was justified.
How Changchun Helped
Changchun argued that the blanket refusal was unlawful as a breach of the duty of partial disclosure (art. 14), pointing to ① the fact that the personal information subject to exemption (such as third parties' identifying details) and the disclosable substance can be separated, so only what must be redacted should be redacted and the rest disclosed; ② the fact that content directly concerning the complainant and their own case is hard to characterize as protectable "privacy of others"; and ③ the strong need for the complainant to see the record in order to obtain a remedy.
"Personal information" is not a master key for withholding an entire document. Changchun works to dismantle the wall of non-disclosure on reasonable terms through the doctrine of partial disclosure. (Outcomes may differ depending on the facts of each matter.)