Secrets they can keep

The state’s highest court has just protected the right of the NYPD to sidestep freedom of information requests in a small subset of cases when responding to them at all might risk secret, sensitive terrorism investigations. We count ourselves as transparency hawks, but it’s the right call.

Plaintiffs Talib Abdur-Rashid and Samir Hashmi claimed that the NYPD violated state law safeguarding the public’s right to know when it declined to respond to a request for records related to whether the men had been targets of surveillance.

In a 4-3 ruling authored by Chief Judge Janet DiFiore, the Court of Appeals ruled that the department was on solid ground in refusing to affirm or deny the existence of the records.

The trick was that the mere acknowledgment by the NYPD that it was in possession of certain documents — an acknowledgement that everyone realizes would then be followed by a legally sound refusal to produce those very documents, on public safety grounds — would have compromised a critical terrorism investigation.

As DiFiore put it: “The need for government confidentiality may be at its zenith when a law enforcement agency is undertaking a covert investigation of individuals or organizations, where the lives of the public, cooperators and undercover officers may hang precariously in the balance and the reputation, livelihood or liberty of the subject may be at stake.”

The NYPD must take care not to abuse this narrow exception, which DiFiore made clear should only be invoked in “rare” instances.

Which is a nice way of saying the public — and this newspaper — will keep demanding a whole hell of a lot of vital information, and not taking “no comment” for an answer.