Privacy Protection Of Government Employees Under Freedom Of Information Act In America

At present,the protection of the privacy interests of government employees is a hot issue in the research of American privacy theory and Freedom of Information Act(FOIA).In the United States,Due to the"dual"nature of their work,government employees are both public power executors and private subjects.With the increasing demands of government information disclosure,their privacy interests as ordinary citizens are gradually violated.Government employees often invoke the"exemption clause 6"and"exemption clause 7" of the freedom of information act to protect their privacy interests in freedom of information litigation cases.Judges usually use the"benefit measurement"standard to demonstrate the proportion of public interests and privacy interests to make judgments.In such freedom of information litigation,it is important to consider:where is the boundary between the public interest and the private interest?How to apply the "exemption clause 6" and "exemption clause 7" in the FOIA?What are the special procedures of government agencies and courts?In order to reply all problems above,there are four parts in this paper to discuss,explore and study the protection system of American government employees' privacy interests.The first chapter defines the definition and scope of government employees and administrative records,which are the subject and carrier of government employees'privacy interests.Then it discusses the dual nature of "private interest" and "public nature" of government employees' privacy interests.The second chapter discusses the normative basis of privacy protection for government employees--freedom of information act,and focuses on the analysis of"exemption clause 6" and "exemption clause 7" in the FOIA,then discusses the relationship between the latter two exemption clauses and the Privacy Act.The third chapter discusses how to determine the public interest and the privacy interest of government employees in judicial practice and how to measure the contrast between the two through specific cases.Next,the relevant factors affecting the measurement of benefits in the application of "exemption clause 6"and"exemption clause 7" in the FOIA are listed,such as the rank of government employees and the nature of administrative records.The Forth chapter studies the procedures of "full exemption" and its restriction on the privacy of government employee.Those procedures are "Glomar Denials"means that government agency can reject the applicants' application for personal information about government employees under the freedom of information act-and the "Vaughan Index" and "Public Affidavit" created by the court in response to such procedures.Then it discuss the conjecture of "alternative procedure" to solve this series of problems.In the last chapter,we talk about the enlightenment of the American experience to China,and puts forward the Chinese approach to the protection of civil servants'privacy interests through the research on the subject of the privacy protection of government employees in the FOIA.