§773 Public Disclosure of Information

Summary

The Administrator must keep the public regularly informed by publishing the statistics, analyses, reports, and data needed to explain energy shortages — what they are, how bad they are, how long they might last, their effects, and what is being done to reduce those effects. Section 552 of title 5 (the Freedom of Information Act) applies to the Administrator’s disclosures, but despite that and section 1905 of title 18, trade secrets or similar confidential business information can be shared with other people who have authority under this chapter to carry out its purposes or for proceedings under the chapter. The Administrator must also, at a reasonable cost and on a properly described request, release public-company-type information like that required in SEC annual reports under sections 78m or 78o(d) — unless the information is a trade secret, process, operation style, or apparatus of a business. The Administrator must make rules to protect people’s privacy and personal data and, when possible, let a person see the information the Administration has about them.