crew v. dhs: regarding border fence: 12/12/08 - dhs status report
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8/7/2019 CREW v. DHS: Regarding Border Fence: 12/12/08 - DHS Status Report
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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
)
CITIZENS FOR RESPONSIBILITY )
AND ETHICS IN WASHINGTON, ))
Plaintiff, ) Civil Action No. 08-1046 (JDB)
)
v. )
)
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF )
HOMELAND SECURITY, )
)
Defendant. )
)
DEFENDANTS STATUS REPORT
Pursuant to the Courts Order dated November 24, 2008 (Document 22), Defendant, U.S.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS), respectfully submits this status report regarding the
processing and release of e-mails responsive to the second part of Plaintiffs request under the
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552, as amended. DHS hereby reports the total
number of e-mails sent and received by each of the 25 Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
officials at the national and field level office level who have been identified as being involved in the
border fence placement decision for all sectors. DHS also advises the Court of the anticipated
completion date of the extraction of the e-mails from the system backup tapes.
DHS is also filing a supplemental declaration as part of this status report. See Ex. A
(Supplemental Declaration of Sonia Yadav (Suppl. Yadav Decl.), Enterprise Messaging
Operations Lead, Data Center Operations Branch, Enterprise Data Center Operations Group,
Enterprise Data Management & Engineering Division, Office of Information & Technology
(OIT), DHS/CBP). This declaration supplements Ms. Yadavs original declaration (Yadav
Decl.) (Document 21-2), which was filed with the Court as part of the Joint Status Report and
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1 The initial estimation assumed that all of the e-mails for the affected officials related to
the fence placement issue; however, it is unlikely that every e-mail sent and received by the 25
officials over a year and a half period of time related to this issue.
2
Proposed Disclosure Schedule (Joint Status Report), on November 21, 2008 (Document 21). See
Suppl. Yadav Decl., 3.
DHS reports that the number of potentially responsive e-mails is significantly greater than
the initial estimation because CBP is able to retrieve a much greater number of e-mails from the
Outlook e-mail system than the Lotus Notes system previously used by the agency. DHS further
reports that there should be no delay in the completion of the process of extracting potentially
responsive e-mails from the CBPs Lotus Notes and Outlook systems, as detailed in the Joint Status
Report. DHS cannot, however, determine at this time whether or not the number of responsive e-
mails will be much greater than the 10,000 estimation contained in the Joint Status Report, and the
non-exempt portions of which CBP will begin to disclose at a rate of 1,000 per month, commencing
on February 20, 2009, pursuant to the Courts Order dated November 24, 2008.1 CBP will be able
to meet the current disclosure schedule if 5% of the total e-mails sent and received by the 25
officials relate to the fence placement issue. CBP offers to file a status report in six months, or by
June 12, 2009, advising the Court and Plaintiff of the actual percentage of responsive e-mails for the
officials whose e-mails will have been processed by that date. If the percentage of responsive e-
mails is greater than 5%, CBP will propose a revised disclosure schedule.
I. E-mail Count
In her supplemental declaration, Ms. Yadav provides an initial estimate of the total number
of potential e-mails that are responsive to the second part of Plaintiffs FOIA request, and offered
an explanation of OITs procedures and capabilities that detail the process by which OIT identifies,
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extracts, and searches e-mails in the CBP database. See Suppl. Yadav Decl., 3. Ms. Yadav further
explains that approximately 25 CBP officials at various levels of CBPs organizational hierarchy
have been identified as being involved in deliberations over fence placement decisions. See id. at
4. Ms. Yadav identifies three distinct phases for the search and location of potentially responsive
e-mails for Plaintiffs request. Id. Ms. Yadav has completed the first phase of that search process,
which consisted of a general search of the CBP e-mail system which allowed her to identify the total
number of e-mails sent and received by the 25 individuals during November 2006 to March 2008.
Id.
The 25 CBP officials have potentially responsive e-mails in both Lotus Notes and Outlook,
the two e-mail systems that were in place during the time period in which potentially responsive e-
mails may be found. See Suppl. Yadav Decl., 5. Ms. Yadav reports that she has completed an
initial search for all 25 officials in Lotus Notes and determined that 1,648 e-mails sent or received
by those 25 officials have been captured in the CBP e-mail system. Id. In addition to conducting
a preliminary search of Lotus Notes, Ms. Yadav has also completed a preliminary Outlook search
of the total amount of e-mails sent or received by the 25 individuals. Id. at 6. After conducting
a general search for all e-mails sent or received in Outlook, Ms. Yadav has determined that
approximately 210,000 e-mails sent or received by the 25 individuals have been captured in the
system. Id. This number of potentially responsive e-mails is much higher than the initial estimate
of 10,000 potentially responsive e-mails, which was based on estimates determined from a search
of the Lotus Notes system. Id.
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Ms. Yadav explains that she was unaware that the number of retrievable e-mails in Outlook
was significantly greater than those in Lotus Notes until she was able to run a general search of both
e-mail systems. See Suppl. Yadav Decl., 7. Some of the 25 individuals who were not journaled
in the Lotus Notes system appear to have been journaled in the Outlook system, which helps to
explain why the total number of retrievable e-mails in Outlook is considerably greater than the
number of retrievable e-mails in Lotus Notes. Id. Additionally, the 25 individuals are likely to be
above-average e-mail users, which also accounts for the higher volume of retrievable e-mail in the
Outlook system. Id.
Ms. Yadavs general search confirms her conclusion, as stated in her first declaration, that
the keyword search should be done in the third phase of the search for, and processing of, e-mails
responsive to the second part of Plaintiffs FOIA request. See Yadav Decl., 14; Joint Status
Report, at pp. 5-6. Specifically, the keyword search will need to be done after all potentially
responsive e-mails for each of the 25 officials have been extracted from the two agency e-mail
systems. See Suppl. Yadav Decl., 8. In addition to the general search described above, Ms.
Yadav also performed a keyword search of the subject line of the potentially responsive e-mails in
both Lotus Notes and Outlook and did not receive any positive hits for the search terms entered. See
id. As a result, CBP will need to do a keyword search for terms embedded in the body of each e-
mail in order to locate e-mails that are responsive to Plaintiffs request. Id. Accordingly, Ms. Yadav
explained that it is necessary to first extract all potentially responsive e-mails for each official before
running a keyword search in the body of each e-mail to find the e-mails that are responsive to
Plaintiffs request. See id.
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2 The initial estimation assumed that all of the e-mails for the affected officials related to
the fence placement issue; however, it is unlikely that every e-mail sent and received by the 25
officials over a year and a half period of time related to this issue.
5
II. Estimated Completion Date of Extraction Process
Ms. Yadav has determined that the process of extracting the 210,000 potentially responsive
e-mails will not take any longer than the estimated time period stated in the Joint Status Report (p.
5). Specifically, Ms. Yadav estimates that the extraction and search process to determine which e-
mails are responsive to Plaintiffs request will take between four and eight months. See Suppl.
Yadav Decl., 9. After running a general search of both Lotus Notes and Outlook e-mail systems,
Ms. Yadav continues to estimate that she will be able to complete the extraction and search process
for all e-mails of the 25 individuals stored in the CBP e-mail system within four to seven months.
Id. As Ms. Yadav stated in her original declaration, the average extraction process typically takes
between 40 and 80 hours for one e-mail user, though in rare cases the extraction process has lasted
as long as three weeks for a user with greatly above-average e-mail use. Id. As such, Ms. Yadav
estimates that all extracted e-mails should be ready for keyword search and processing by May 31,
2009. Id.
III. Effect of E-mail Count on Disclosure Schedule
DHS cannot determine at this time whether the number of responsive e-mails will be much
greater than the 10,000 estimation contained in the Joint Status Report, and the non-exempt portions
which CBP will begin to disclose at a rate of 1,000 per month, commencing on February 20, 2009,
pursuant to the Courts Order dated November 24, 2008.2 CBP will be able to meet the current
disclosure schedule if 5% of the total e-mail traffic relating to the 25 officials relates to the fence
placement issue. CBP offers to file a status report in six months, or by June 12, 2009, advising the
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Court and Plaintiff of the percentage of responsive e-mails for the officials whose e-mails will have
been processed by that date. If the percentage of responsive e-mails is greater than 5%, then CBP
will propose a revised disclosure schedule.
Specifically, Ms. Yadav explains that, having completed the initial search of all Lotus Notes
e-mails captured in the system for the 25 individuals, she will process those e-mails first before
moving on to those e-mails captured in the Outlook system. See Suppl. Yadav Decl., 10. If
certain CBP officials within the 25 have more responsive e-mail than others after completing the
extraction and search in the Lotus Notes system, Ms. Yadav will adjust the extraction and search of
all Outlook e-mail in order to focus on those users who will likely have the most e-mails responsive
to Plaintiffs request within the Outlook system. Id.
In order to determine what percentage of the potentially responsive e-mails will ultimately
be responsive to Plaintiffs request at this time, Ms. Yadav would need to extract the messages and
run a keyword search within the body of each e-mail. See Suppl. Yadav Decl., 11. This is the
process that will be performed in the third phase of the processing of the e-mails detailed in the Joint
Status Report (pp. 5-6). Based on Ms. Yadavs estimate, a FOIA specialist who receives extracted
e-mails that have been searched by keywords in the body of the e-mail will be able to process
between six and eight e-mail users a month, depending on the volume of e-mail use for each user.
Id. The FOIA specialist will be able to run a keyword search through all extracted e-mails and print
the responsive e-mails, or run an additional keyword search without the need to run another
extraction. Id. In any event, if the percentage of responsive e-mails is about 5% of all potentially
responsive e-mails sent or received by the 25 officials, then CBP expects it will be able to meet the
disclosure deadlines set in the Courts Order dated November 24, 2008.
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Respectfully submitted,
/s/
JEFFREY A. TAYLOR, D.C. BAR # 498610
United States Attorney
/s/
RUDOLPH CONTRERAS, D.C. BAR # 434122
Assistant United States Attorney
/s/
JOHN G. INTERRANTE
PA Bar # 61373
Assistant United States AttorneyCivil Division, Room E-4806
555 4th Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20530
(202) 514-7220
(202) 514-8780 (fax)
Of Counsel:
Simon Fisherow, U.S. Customs and Border ProtectionSusan Shama, U.S. Customs and Border Protection
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Exhibit A
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Case 1:08-cv-01046-JDB Document 24-2 Filed 12/12/2008 Pa
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Case 1:08-cv-01046-JDB Document 24-2 Filed 12/12/2008 Pa
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Case 1:08-cv-01046-JDB Document 24-2 Filed 12/12/2008 Pa
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Case 1:08-cv-01046-JDB Document 24-2 Filed 12/12/2008 Pa
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Case 1:08-cv-01046-JDB Document 24-2 Filed 12/12/2008 Pa