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Opinion Letter No. 97-02
March 11, 1997
Photograph of Deceased is a Public Record
A government employee’s employment identification
photograph, taken approximately ten years
before the employee’s death, is a public record. Only living
individuals have significant privacy
interests; therefore, disclosing a deceased individual's employee
identification photograph would not
be an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.
However, the deceased's surviving family members may have privacy
interests in the government
record which may justify withholding it from public disclosure where:
1) the record is directly
connected with the decedent’s death or manner of death and
would disclose particularly sensitive,
often graphic, personal details about the circumstances surrounding
an individual’s death; or 2) the
release of the information would disrupt the surviving families’
peace of mind. In this case, however,
the identification photograph is completely unrelated to the deceased’s
death. Accordingly, the
surviving family members do not have a privacy interest in the photograph
and it should be disclosed.
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