High Court Protects Commercial Data from Disclosure

The second case involves the question of whether information submitted to a government agency under a promise of confidentially must be disclosed under a Freedom of Information Act request.  The court held that “Where commercial or financial information is both customarily and actually treated as private by its owner and provided to the gov­ernment under an assurance of privacy, the information is “confiden­tial” within Exemption 4’s meaning.”