What information is exempt under the FOIA?
While the focus of the FOIA is on making government information available to the public, the statute recognizes that disclosure of certain kinds of information would be harmful. For this reason, the FOIA exempts nine categories of information from the general mandatory disclosure rule, and excludes certain records from coverage under the FOIA. FTC records that most frequently fall into one of these categories include material we have obtained from businesses, certain internal communications that are protected by a privilege, personal information, law enforcement records, and internal personnel rules and practices. Trade Secrets and Other Confidential Business Information In the course of its law enforcement activities, the FTC obtains a great deal of sensitive or confidential information from businesses. Disclosure of this information often could cause competitive harm to the businesses that provided it. Moreover, businesses are more willing to cooperate with FTC investigations if they
