†233 (EPIC 2003): While court files always have been public, they were considered to enjoy 'practical obscurity.' That is, the records were stored in such an inaccessible fashion that only the determined and resourceful could obtain them. To this day, most records probably are stored at the local level on different types of media (paper, magnetic tape) and are indexed with varying degrees of accuracy and usefulness.
†223 (Personal communication, Ken Withers, 9 December 2003): The term 'practical obscurity' first appears in U.S. Dept. of Justice v. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 489 U.S. 749 (1989). Considering the application of FOIA exemption 7(c) to a rap sheet, the court held that where the subject of a rap sheet is a private citizen and the information is in the Government's control as a compilation, rather than as a record of what the Government is up to, the privacy interest in maintaining the rap sheet's 'practical obscurity' is always at its apex while the FOIA-based public interest in disclosure is at its nadir. Thus, as a categorical matter, rap sheets are excluded from disclosure by the exemption in such circumstances.
