[Code of Federal Regulations]
[Title 45, Volume 1, Parts 1 to 199]
[Revised as of October 1, 2000]
From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access
[CITE: 45CFR5.67]

[Page 31]
 
                        TITLE 45--PUBLIC WELFARE
 
                           AND HUMAN SERVICES
 
PART 5--FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REGULATIONS--Table of Contents
 
             Subpart F--Reasons for Withholding Some Records
 
Sec. 5.67  Exemption six: Clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.

    (a) Documents affected. We may withhold records about individuals if 
disclosure would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of their 
personal privacy.
    (b) Balancing test. In deciding whether to release records to you 
that contain personal or private information about someone else, we 
weigh the foreseeable harm of invading that person's privacy against the 
public benefit that would result from the release. If you were seeking 
information for a purely commercial venture, for example, we might not 
think that disclosure would primarily benefit the public and we would 
deny your request. On the other hand, we would be more inclined to 
release information if you were working on a research project that gave 
promise of providing valuable information to a wide audience. However, 
in our evaluation of requests for records we attempt to guard against 
the release of information that might involve a violation of personal 
privacy because of a requester being able to ``read between the lines'' 
or piece together items that would constitute information that normally 
would be exempt from mandatory disclosure under Exemption Six.
    (c) Examples. Some of the information that we frequently withhold 
under Exemption Six is: Home addresses, ages, and minority group status 
of our employees or former employees; social security numbers; medical 
information about individuals participating in clinical research 
studies; names and addresses of individual beneficiaries of our 
programs, or benefits such individuals receive; earning records, claim 
files, and other personal information maintained by the Social Security 
Administration, the Public Health Service, and the Health Care Financing 
Administration.