FIA-18-0040 - In the Matter of Muira McCammon

On December 14, 2018, the Office of Hearings and Appeals (OHA) denied a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) appeal filed by Kendra Albert, Esq. on behalf of Ms. Muira McCammon (Appellant) from a final determination issued by the Department of Energy's Office of Public Information (OPI). On appeal, Appellant asserted that OPI had not conducted an adequate search for "any tweets sent out on Twitter that were deleted or kept in draft form from the Twitter handle @fossilenergygov . . . [and] copies of any e-mails or correspondence regarding the drafting and deletion of these tweets." The Office of Fossil Energy (FE) indicated that it did not have any records of Tweets deleted from the FE Twitter account, and that FE drafted Tweets outside of the Twitter account and that there were therefore no Tweets kept in draft form in the drafts folder of the account. FE also searched the e-mail accounts of every member of the FE staff with access to the FE Twitter account using the keywords "tweet," "Twitter," and "delete," but found no records. OHA determined that the adequacy of FE's search was not negatively affected by omitting "draft" from its search terms since FE did not prepare draft Tweets through its Twitter account and could therefore infer that no e-mails would exist about non-existent drafts. As no records of deleted Tweets existed, FE did not keep Tweets in draft form on the FE Twitter account, and FE employed reasonable search terms to search the e-mail accounts of all members of its staff with access to the FE Twitter account,   OHA concluded that the search was adequate. Accordingly, OHA denied Appellant's appeal. OHA Case No. FIA-18-0040