In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 21-1229 WILLIAM A. WHITE, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, et al., Defendants-Appellees. ____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois. No. 16-cv-948-JPG — J. Phil Gilbert, Judge. ____________________ SUBMITTED OCTOBER 6, 2021 * — DECIDED OCTOBER 22, 2021 ____________________ Before ROVNER, BRENNAN, and SCUDDER, Circuit Judges. PER CURIAM. William White sued several federal agencies under the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552, chal- lenging the pace at which the agencies released responsive * We have agreed to decide the case without oral argument because the briefs and record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would not significantly aid the court. FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C). 2 No. 21-1229 records and their alleged failure to reveal other records. The district court granted summary judgment for the agencies. We affirm. I. Background For years, White was involved in the white-supremacist movement. Along the way he committed various crimes and is now in federal prison. At the heart of his hundreds of FOIA requests lies a conspiracy theory: that the racist movement he joined is really an elaborate sting operation by the govern- ment. His requests went to four agencies under the Depart- ment of Justice: the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the United States Marshals Service; the Bureau of Alcohol, To- bacco, Firearms and Explosives; and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The details of the requests to the ATF and Bureau of Prisons are not important to our analysis, so we focus on the requests to the FBI and Marshals Service. Although the FBI told White it had located about 100,000 pages of potentially responsive records on its investigations into White and white-supremacist groups, this did not mean White immediately received 100,000 pieces of paper. Rather, the FBI told White that its policies authorized the review, re- daction, and copying of 500 pages per month because finite resources must be reasonably apportioned among different requesters. See 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(6)(D)(i); 28 C.F.R. § 16.5(b). Meanwhile, the FBI explained, some of White’s search terms yielded no results. And as to requests for records about certain people, the FBI furnished Glomar responses—so named for the Hughes Glomar Explorer, the submarine-recov- ery ship at the center of Phillippi v. CIA, 546 F.2d 1009, 1010– 11 (D.C. Cir. 1976). A Glomar response announces that, to No. 21-1229 3 protect interests recognized by FOIA, the agency will neither confirm nor deny the existence of responsive records. Bassio- uni v. CIA, 392 F.3d 244, 246 (7th Cir. 2004). A Glomar response is proper if, for instance, confirming or denying that records exist would reveal whether someone is an informant or oth- erwise intrude unduly on privacy. Wolf v. CIA, 473 F.3d 370, 374 (D.C. Cir. 2007) (concluding Glomar responses are appro- priate to safeguard interests protected by FOIA exemptions); see 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(6), (7)(C) (listing FOIA exemptions based on threats to …
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