United States Secret Service

About the agency
The United States Secret Service (also USSS or Secret Service) is a federal law enforcement agency under the Department of Homeland Security charged with conducting criminal investigations and protecting the nation's leaders, notably the president. Until 2003, the Secret Service was part of the Department of the Treasury, as the agency was originally founded to combat the then-widespread counterfeiting of US currency.

Records available
The Secret Service is often asked to produce visitor logs by requesters interested in who is meeting with the President and Vice President. See e.g., Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington v. U.S. Dep't of Homeland Sec., 532 F.3d 860 (D.C. Cir. 2008). In Washington Post v. Dep't of Homeland Sec., 459 F. Supp. 2d 61 (D.D.C. 2006), the court held that records of visitors to the Vice President and his senior staff, maintained on one of two Secret Service access monitoring systems, were under control of the Secret Service and thus were “agency records” for purposes of newspaper's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, even though the Secret Service had a clear intent to relinquish control of the records, its ability to use and dispose of them as it saw fit was limited, and the records were not merged with agency files. While determining that an agency record is among the first steps in securing disclosure, courts sometimes withhold the visitor logs like in Doyle v. DHS from the Southern District of New York.

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