FOIA Advisor

FOIA News: DOJ continues to protect mug shots

Allan BlutsteinComment

Feds: Mug shots too revealing to be made public

By Joe Guillen, Detroit Free Press, Apr. 22, 2017

The U.S. Department of Justice under President Donald Trump is staking the same ground as the previous administration in opposing the Detroit Free Press' legal fight over the public release of criminal mug shots in federal cases.

In a bid to convince the U.S. Supreme Court from taking up a case the Free Press originally filed in 2013, the Department of Justice argued in a brief filed April 12 that those accused of crimes have a privacy interest in keeping mug shots out of the public eye — especially in today's Internet age in which mugshots can live online in perpetuity.

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