In what appears to be an AI-generated meme spoofing the adverse global fallout of Operation Epic Fury, an acolyte is shown whispering into an attentive ear: “Mr President, the Iran war is getting so bad we may have to use the Epstein Files as a distraction.” Indeed, the danse macabre (dance of death) playing out in the West Asian theatre has begun eclipsing public memory of these files. Those who have remained oblivious of this multi-nation scandal, might like to know – since December, 2025, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) has been publishing truckloads of records containing documents, emails, photos and videos that attest to the nefarious activities of – Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted child sex offender. Epstein himself died by suicide in prison, in 2019. But this piece is not about whose names have figured in these files or whose faces are recognisable in the photographs alongside survivors trafficked through his paedophile network. Nor is this write-up about how disinterested most of our own mass media (with a few honourable exceptions) has been about this issue, this side of the Atlantic. This piece is about the lessons that can be picked up from America’s systemic response to the Epstein scandal – lawfully compelling transparency and protecting personal privacy in a balanced manner. The Epstein Files Transparency Act, 2025After the devastating World War II, USA was one of the few countries which enacted a national law requiring the government, particularly the executive branch, to guarantee people access to information about its policies, actions and omissions. Yet, the Freedom of Information Act, 1966 (FOI Act, 1966) was not deemed adequate to compel the disclosure of the huge cache of Epstein files. Last November, the US Congress enacted a special law mandating time-bound disclosure of these files. Few among us know about the seminal contribution made by politicians of Indian origin to shaping the US’s institutional response to the Epstein scandal. Congressman Ro Khanna of the Democratic Party introduced the draft transparency legislation in the House of Representatives last year. He was born in Philadelphia in a Punjabi family which had migrated to the US during the late 1960s. One of the 24 co-sponsors of this Bill is another Democrat member of the same House, Shri Thanedar, born in Belagavi, Karnataka, who migrated to the USA in the late 1980s. Both of them have a long and distinguished record of accomplishments in academia and public service. Strangely, those who do not tire of crowing about the Indian diaspora’s accomplishments have been quite tepid in their reaction to the impact these Congressmen have had on transparent government in the US.Salient features of EFTAThe Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA) is barely three pages long. Yet, this law has compelled the powerful DoJ to publish more than thirty lakh pages of information, within two months of enactment (the statutory deadline was 30 days). Journalists and researchers are digging into the online database to discover who had what kinds of relationship with Epstein or his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, currently serving a 20-year sentence for child sex-trafficking. All of this is in pursuit of the very public demand to hold to account those who treated the bodies of under-aged girls – children – as their playthings, with impunity.Both offenders, Epstein and Maxwell, are named in the long title of this law. Its three-section-long text lists the categories of information that must be published, the manner of their publication and the grounds on which public access to sensitive information may be lawfully withheld. Mandatory disclosures cover records pertaining to all investigations, prosecutions and custodial matters involving the infamous duo, their travel records, customs and immigration documentation and even Epstein’s death-related records. EFTA also requires the disclosure of all individuals including government officials, named or referenced in connection with Epstein’s criminal activities and corporate, non-profit and academic entities with known or even ‘alleged’ ties to his trafficking or financial networks. Additionally, the law mandates transparency of all actions concerning the destruction, alteration, misplacement or concealment of paper or electronic records relating to this scandal.EFTA not only prescribes such an expansive degree of transparency but like Sections 8(1) and 10 of our own RTI Act, also provides for the withholding and redaction (severing or blacking out) of information, legitimately. Permissible grounds are: protection of victims’ identities and their medical files and prevention of jeopardy to any ongoing federal investigation or prosecution relating to this scandal, amongst others. Information relating to national defense or foreign policy could also be classified ‘secret’ through an Executive Order but every instance of withholding or redaction of information is to be accompanied by adequate justification and recorded in Federal Registers which are submitted to the US Congress. The US Attorney General is tasked with the job of publicly releasing a summary of all such classified information. What cannot be basis to withhold or redact from Epstein FilesSection 2(b) of EFTA specifically states, “No record shall be withheld, delayed or redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.” Photo: Extract from the Epstein Files Transparency Act, 2025.What does this have to do with India?It is common knowledge that our governments also classify official records ‘top secret’, ‘secret’ or ‘confidential’ based on the perceived sensitivity of their contents. Public authorities have denied access to official information to many an RTI activist, claiming that that government has labelled those documents ‘confidential’. But under which law or rule is sensitive information safeguarded and according to what criteria? Contrary to popular perception, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) informed the Lok Sabha in 2015 that the classification of sensitive records is not done under the colonial Official Secrets Act, 1923 (Unstarred Question No. 1262 answered on 28th July). Instead, the criteria for classifying records and the procedures for ensuring their safety are laid down in the Ministry’s Manual of Departmental Security Instructions, 1994.Few people know that this manual itself is a ‘secret’ document. In 2009, the Central Information Commission dismissed my RTI case against the MHA, holding that the disclosure of this manual and the classification system might enable “individuals hostile to the nation to know the security strategy and the details about officers who deal with the country’s sensitive information”. A couple of months after losing this case, I chanced upon a Draft Office Procedure Manual that the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Administration had put on its website for public consultation. It described the classification scheme and criteria for marking sensitive documents. Even though the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Administration is under the control of MHA, the practice of maintaining secrecy for the classificatory procedure and criteria was flouted by one if its own instrumentalities. After I published an article about this inconsistency of practice, the Draft Manual was removed and the final version was never published on the website. The Manual of Office Procedure published by the Union government’s Central Secretariat, which all ministries, departments and their instrumentalities follow, omits all mention of how sensitive records must be classified and safeguarded.Strangely, since then, the MHA has countenanced the public disclosure of the classification system for sensitive information in at least two more official documents, without demur. The ministry’s 2014 guidelines on National Information Security Policy (though absent from its own website) are uploaded on Punjab’s Barnala District Police website. Part Seven of this document describes the criteria for classifying restricted official records – “top secret”, “secret”, “confidential” and “restricted”, in that order of sensitivity. Embarrassment to government as a classification criterionAccording to MHA’s guidelines, one of the criteria for labelling a document ‘secret’ is that its contents might be an “embarrassment” to government functioning. Photo: Extract from MHA’s 2014 Guidelines on National Information Security Policy.Around the same time, the Union government privatised our defence industry and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) put out a manual regarding security instructions for private sector entities. “Embarrassment to government in its functioning” is a criterion for classifying records ‘secret’ and for the lower security grading of ‘confidential’. Photo: Extracts from the Defence Ministry’s 2014 Security Manual for Licensed Defence Industries.Strangely, the phraseology used in the MHA’s guidelines while describing the criteria for the ‘secret’ category: “cause serious embarrassment in its functioning” makes little sense as it does not indicate whose embarrassment is sought to be prevented by maintaining secrecy. This criterion makes sense only when we look at the language used in the MoD’s Security Manual: “cause embarrassment to the Government in its functioning”. Surely the MHA’s guidelines intended to protect our national interests ought to have been drafted with greater care. Due diligence ought to have been exercised by whosoever that was responsible for editing them prior to dissemination. Nevertheless, we must be grateful to Barnala Police for ‘unintentionally’ educating us about the scheme and criteria for classifying sensitive documents. Perhaps these documents might also disappear from public view after this article is published, who knows?What is problematic with our classification criteria?Readers may wonder why, if every country must determine its own criteria for classifying sensitive documents, this is a problem?” Well, the criterion described above prevails in utter disregard of what a seven-Judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court said in 1981. In the matter of S.P. Gupta vs President of India [AIR 1982 SC149], where litigants sought disclosure of the correspondence between the Union law minister and the Chief Justice of India regarding the appointment and transfer of additional judges of high courts, Justice P.N. Bhagwati (as he then was), aligning with the majority view, opined as follows:“Where the State is a party to an action in which disclosure of a document is sought by the opposite party, it is possible that the decision to withhold the document may be influenced by the apprehension that such disclosure may adversely affect the head of the department or the department itself or the minister or even the Government or that it may provoke public criticism or censure in the legislature or in the press, but it is essential that such considerations should be totally kept out in reaching the decision whether or not to disclose the document.” So, according to the apex court, the probable “embarrassment” that public criticism or censure in the press could cause to the government as a whole or to a minister or a bureaucrat heading the department, over the disclosure of sensitive information cannot be even a guiding factor for their classification as ‘secret’ or ‘confidential’ records.In an apparent recognition of this judicial position, the Second Administrative Reforms Commission recommended, in 2006, that the criteria for classifying sensitive documents must be aligned with the exemption clauses listed in the newly enforced RTI Act instead of the erstwhile criteria. The UPA Government decided to amend the first para of MHA’s Manual to give effect to this recommendation and permitted each Department to identify which information falling under the RTI exemption clauses would be classified under which category. However, as the MHA and MoD’s guidelines discussed above show, that decision was not implemented until 2014, at least. It is anybody’s guess whether the successor NDA Government has done any better.Protection for personal privacy under EFTAReaders who have got to this point may now wonder, is there any protection at all for personal privacy in the EFTA? Of course, there is such a protection but it is set to a justifiably high standard. Section 2(b)(1) permits the US Attorney General to withhold or redact the segregable (severable) portions of the Epstein files that contain personally identifiable information of victims or victims’ personal, medical or other similar files, if disclosure would constitute “a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy”.Photo: Extract from the Epstein Files Transparency Act, 2025.‘Unwarranted invasion of personal privacy’ is not a new standard for exempting the disclosure of information that the US Congress invented in the aftermath of the Epstein scandal. It was already part of the Federal FOI Act, 1966 for protecting personal privacy on two accounts. Exemption 6 to the general rule of disclosure protects information of individuals contained in personnel (HR) and medical files and (other) similar files when the disclosure of information would constitute a “clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy”. Under Exemption 7c which covers information about individuals compiled for law enforcement purposes, disclosure is prohibited if it “could reasonably be expected to constitute unwarranted invasion of personal privacy”.The DoJ is also the nodal agency for guiding the implementation of the FOI Act, 1966 in the US Federal Government. The DOJ’s Guidance Notes about the manner of interpretation of the two privacy exemption clauses (updated as recently as in March 2025) make it crystal clear that the use of the phrase “unwarranted invasion” implies that the protection for personal privacy of individuals must be balanced against the public interest in disclosure even when these exemptions are applicable at first glance. So, the protection for personal privacy is not a blanket exemption throwing all such information into a blackbox, forever insulating it from public scrutiny. It is this very long-standing standard that was inserted in the EFTA in 2025 to permit the disclosure of personal information unless, by so doing the privacy of individuals would be invaded in an unwarranted (uncalled for) manner. This is why the names of many high and mighty people who consorted with Epstein and his partner stand disclosed today along with their cringe-worthy personas and views .Readers who are familiar with our own RTI Act will recall that Section 8(1)(j), as enacted in 2005, contained a similar standard for protecting personal information. Public authorities could withhold access to personal information of individuals if the disclosure had no relationship to any public activity or public interest or if such disclosure would cause “unwarranted invasion of the privacy of an individual”. This privacy exemption was subject to a public interest override test. A public information officer (PIO) was mandated to disclose personal information if the larger public interest justified transparency, despite the attraction of this exemption at first glance. What is implied in the US’s FOI Act was made explicit in our RTI Act.But all this changed in 2023 when the NDA government successfully pushed a retrograde amendment to this privacy protection exemption through the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023. With the enforcement of this new law, every PIO is now required to treat all personal information contained in official records as a mandatory ‘no go’ area for the purpose of disclosure. The default position now is that any and all ‘personal information’ will be exempt from disclosure, period. There is no duty on the PIO to make any kind of assessment as to whether public interest concerns trump the protection given for personal information. Till date, our government has not offered a justification for this regressive amendment. As I am already before the Supreme Court opposing this amendment, propriety prevents me from saying anything more on this subject.End noteThe haemorrhaging effect of the Epstein files on the carefully cultivated reputations of several public personas has not abated. Democrats are clamouring for the release of more files because they believe DoJ officials have not scrupulously applied EFTA’s standards for withholding and redaction. At the time of writing, some more documents were released, one of which apparently contains an unverified testimony of a survivor naming the current occupant of the White House as one of her alleged abusers. Heaven forbid, if such a scandal were to occur in our own country, would our parliament and babudom respond in a similar manner? Preachy Vishwaguru has much to learn about the practice of transparency from the planet’s prodigal policeman.Venkatesh Nayak is Director, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, New Delhi. Views are personal. A shorter version of this article was published in the March 2026 edition of New Delhi Post.