Subject: Confidentiality Issues
From: [email-masked]
To: [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 01:56:00 -0700 (PDT)

I am forwarding the text of a response I received from Gisele Rankin,
attorney for the Publilc Staff, to my inquiry regarding the security of
information submitted to the Commission under seal.  It largely tracks our
understanding and analysis.  The following are her words:

"To my knowledge, no one has challenged anything filed with the
Commission under seal pursuant to the trade secret statute.  Under that
statute, if you want the information claimed to be a trade secret, you
have to go to court and carry the burden (and my recollection from
reading the statute is that it is a very high burden).  The only other
way it could be made public would be for the Commission to order it to
be made public (because it isn't a trade secret), which to my knowledge
has never happened with anything even remotely of commercial value and
even then the owner of the information could go to court to stop it.
Costs related to generation are the most obviously "trade secret" type
information with which we deal. None of the utilities would try to claim
it isn't protected, because then they would have to reveal their
information.  CUCA could try to get it in order to participate in the
hearing, but CUCA generally supports IPP development (in general), and
Jamie would have to sign a nondisclosure agreement and not reveal the
information to anyone.  For all practical purposes, Enron is safe.
(Even if a claim were made, Enron could tie it up until the information
was so old it was worth much less, if anything.)"