I would be interested to know how others would handle the following.
Assume that the appropriate response to "Please provide copies of all
correspondence between Fred and Freda about Subject X" would properly
be "We refuse to confirm the existence or denial of such correspondence".
Assume also there is also lots of innoccuous correspondence between Fred
and Freda about other subjects.
How then do I reply to a request "Please provide copies of all
correspondence between Fred and Freda."
I have concluded I probably have to give the same response. I cannot just
list / disclose the rest and ignore the stuff about Subject X, as if I
have it I must disclose it or refuse to confirm or deny.
However I cannot list / disclose the rest and put in a statement of
refusal to confirm or deny - because in such a case this would effectively
be an admission - after all I am not refusing to confirm or deny
correspondence about mining green cheese on the moon, so why would I
choose to refuse to confirm or deny subject X.
I probably cannot even to offer to help by suggesting they limit their
search to a specific subject as that might also give the ganme away.
Indeed even the proposed response might do so.
The logical conclusion seems to be that I must NEVER answer any such
request in order to be consistent. If I comply with requests A B and C of
this type, but refuse on request D because some of the potential response
would be exempt - that in itself might give the game away to an
intelligent requester. And yet in most cases I would want to ...
|