Evan Anderson v. Quincy, City of - Police Department (SPR 20160746)

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts William Francis Galvin, Secretary of the Commonwealth Public Records Division Shawn A. Williams Supervisor ofR ecords September 20, 2016 SPR16/746 Captain John R. Dougan City of Quincy - Police Department 1 Sea Street Quincy, MA 02169 Dear Captain Dougan: I have received the petition of Evan Anderson appealing the response of the City of Quincy Police Department (Department) to a request for public records. G. L. c. 66 § 1O (b ); see also 950 C.M.R. 32.08(2). Specifically, Mr. Anderson requested copies of all metadata from a certain email account for a specified time period. In a response dated September 9, 2016 the Department explained it had 32,506 emails that contain responsive information. The Department further stated that any extract of the metadata would require it to "to create ... a record," and Mr. Anderson appealed. The Public Records Law The Public Records Law strongly favors disclosure by creating a presumption that all governmental records are public records. G. L. c. 66, § 10( c ); 950 C.M.R. 32.08(4 ). "Public records" is broadly defined to include all documentary materials or data, regardless of physical form or characteristics, made or received by any officer or employee of any town of the Commonwealth, unless falling within a statutory exemption. G. L. c. 4, § 7(26). Create a Record While the Public Records Law states that a custodian of records is not required to create a record in response to a public records request, there is a fundamental difference between creation of a completely new record and conducting a query search of data within an existing record or database. Information extracted from a database does not satisfy the definition of creating a record in response to a request for public record. See Globe Newspaper v. Conte, 2001 Mass. Super. LEXIS 328, at *30-31 (Sup. Ct. July 19, 2001). OneAshburton Place, Room 1719, Boston, Massachusetts 02108 · (617) 727-2832 ·Fax (617) 727-5914 www.sec.state.ma. us/ pre

Captain John R. Dougan SPR16/746 Page2 September 20, 2016 Order Accordingly, the Department is hereby ordered to review Mr. Anderson's request and provide a detailed response, prepared in a manner consistent with this order, the Public Records Law and its Regulations. A copy of any such response must be p vided to this office. It is ;n· preferable to send an electronic copy of this response to offi eat pre@sec.state.ma.us. ~yours, A.2liarns Supervisor of Records cc: Mr. Evan Anderson