496
Opinion of the Court
information that sheds light on an agency's performance of its statutory duties falls squarely within that statutory purpose. That purpose, however, is not fostered by disclosure of information about private citizens that is accumulated in various governmental files but that reveals little or nothing about an agency's own conduct." 489 U. S., at 773 (quoting Rose, supra, at 360-361) (other internal quotation marks and citations omitted).
See also Rose, supra, at 372 (Exemption 6 cases "require a balancing of the individual's right of privacy against the preservation of the basic purpose of [FOIA] to open agency action to the light of public scrutiny") (internal quotation marks omitted).
Third, "whether an invasion of privacy is warranted cannot turn on the purposes for which the request for information is made." Reporters Comm., 489 U. S., at 771. Because "Congress 'clearly intended' the FOIA 'to give any member of the public as much right to disclosure as one with a special interest [in a particular document],' " ibid. (quoting NLRB v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 421 U. S. 132, 149 (1975)), except in certain cases involving claims of privilege, "the identity of the requesting party has no bearing on the merits of his or her FOIA request," 489 U. S., at 771.6
6 Our decision in Reporters Committee turned on the applicability of FOIA Exemption 7(C) to the requests for "rap sheets." In pertinent part, Exemption 7(C) provides that "[FOIA] does not apply to matters that are . . . (7) records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes, but only to the extent that the production of such law enforcement records or information . . . (C) could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwar-ranted invasion of personal privacy." 5 U. S. C. § 552(b)(7)(C). When we applied the FOIA principles discussed in the text, we concluded that "[t]he privacy interest in maintaining the practical obscurity of rap-sheet information will always be high," and that "the FOIA-based public interest in disclosure is at its nadir" when third parties seek law enforcement records concerning private citizens, given that those records would shed no light on the activities of government agencies or officials. Reporters Comm., 489 U. S., at 780. Because the privacy interest outweighed the relevant
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