Q. What rule or regulation provides that the identity of the requester is not confidential? And does this apply to OSHA FOIA requests?
A. Federal courts have ruled that FOIA requesters do not ordinarily expect that their names will be kept private and, therefore, release of their names would not cause even the minimal invasion of privacy necessary to trigger the balancing test under Exemption 6. By contrast, courts have decided that the identities of first-party requesters under the Privacy Act of 1974 should be protected because, unlike under the FOIA, an expectation of privacy can fairly be inferred from the personal nature of the records involved in those requests. See, e.g., Hammond v. DOD (D.D.C.) (protecting names of requesters seeking their own medical records from Walter Reed hospital).
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration appears to follow the relevant case law, as illustrated by its processing of the following 2016-2017 FOIA log.