1.2—Information made available.
(a) General.
The FOIA (5 U.S.C. 552) provides for access to
information and records developed or maintained by Federal agencies. The provisions
of section 552 are intended to assure the right of the public to information.
Generally, this section divides agency information into three major categories and
provides methods by which each category of information is to be made available to
the public. The three major categories of information are as follows:
(2)
Information required to be made available for public inspection and copying or,
in the alternative, to be published and offered for sale (see § 1.4 ); and
(3)
Information required to be made available to any member of the public upon
specific request (see § 1.5 ).
(b)
(c)
t only to the exemptions and exclusions set forth in 5 U.S.C. 552(b) and
(c), any person shall be afforded access to information or records in the possession
of any bureau of the Department of the Treasury, subject to the regulations in this
subpart and any regulations of a bureau implementing or supplementing them.
(c) Exemptions.
(1)
The disclosure requirements of 5 U.S.C. 552(a) do
not apply to certain matters which are exempt under 5 U.S.C. 552(b); nor do the
disclosure requirements apply to certain matters which are excluded under 5 U.S.C.
552(c).
(2)
Even though an exemption described in 5 U.S.C. 552(b) may be applicable to the
information or records requested, a Treasury bureau may, if not precluded by law,
elect under the circumstances of that request not to apply the exemption. The fact
that the exemption is not applied by a bureau in response to a particular request
shall have no precedential significance in processing other requests, but is merely
an indication that, in the processing of the particular request, the bureau finds no
necessity for applying the exemption.