[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Fw: L.A. Times: Destruction of Public Records

[Al Kagan]

FYI.  A good article on the restriction of govt info.

>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: <mailto:RScala at CO.COCONINO.AZ.US>Scala, Rachel
>To: <mailto:AMNESTYNAU at lists.nau.edu>AMNESTYNAU at lists.nau.edu
>Sent: Monday, November 26, 2001 7:18 PM
>Subject: FW: L.A. Times: Destruction of Public Records
>
>
>The Government Printing Office has begun ordering about 1,300 libraries
>nationwide that serve as federal depositories to destroy
>government records that federal agencies say could be too sensitive for
>public consumption.
>
>
>
><http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-111801inform.story>http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-111801inform.story
>
>Rising Fears That What We Do Know Can Hurt Us
>
>By ERIC LICHTBLAU, L.A. Times, 11/18/01
>
>WASHINGTON - The document seemed innocuous enough: a survey of
>government data on reservoirs and dams on CD-ROM. But then came last
>month's federal directive to U.S. libraries: "Destroy the report."
>
>So a Syracuse University library clerk broke the disc into pieces,
>saving a single shard to prove that the deed was done.
>
>The unusual order from the Government Printing Office reflects one of
>the hidden casualties of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks: the public's
>shrinking access to information that many once took for granted.
>
>Want to find out whether there are any hazardous waste sites near the
>local day-care center? What safety controls are in place at nuclear
>power plants? Or how many people are incarcerated in terrorist-related
>probes?
>
>Since Sept. 11, it has become much harder to get such information from
>the federal government, a growing number of states and public libraries
>as heightened concern about national security has often trumped the
>public's "right to know:"
>
>* At least 15 federal agencies have yanked potentially sensitive
>information off the Internet, or removed Web sites altogether, for fear
>that terrorists could exploit the government data. The excised material
>ranges from information on chemical reactors and risk-management
>programs to airport data and mapping of oil pipelines.
>
>* Several states have followed the federal government's lead.
>California, for example, has removed information on dams and aqueducts,
>state officials said.
>
>* Members of the public who want to use reading rooms at federal
>agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service must now make an
>appointment and be escorted by an employee to ensure that information is
>not misused.
>
>* The Government Printing Office has begun ordering about 1,300
>libraries nationwide that serve as federal depositories to destroy
>government records that federal agencies say could be too sensitive for
>public consumption.
>
>* Federal agencies are imposing a stricter standard in reviewing
>hundreds of thousands of Freedom of Information Act requests from the
>public each year; officials no longer have to show that disclosure would
>cause "substantial harm" before rejecting a request. Watchdog groups say
>they have already started to see rejections of requests that likely
>would have been granted before.
>
>The trend reverses a decades-long shift toward greater public access to
>information, even highly sensitive documents such as the Pentagon Papers
>or unconventional manifestos such as "The Anarchist's Cookbook," a
>compilation of recipes for making bombs. The popularity of the Internet
>has made sensitive information even easier to come by in recent years,
>but the events of Sept. 11 are now fueling a new debate in Washington:
>How much do Americans need to know?
>
>Attacks Place Internet Content in New Light
>
>The swinging of the pendulum away from open records, supporters of the
>trend say, is a necessary safeguard against terrorists who could use
>sensitive public information to attack airports, water treatment plants,
>nuclear reactors and more.
>
>In an Oct. 12 memo announcing the new Freedom of Information Act
>policies, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said that, while "a well-informed
>citizenry" is essential to government accountability, national security
>should be a priority.
>
>"The tragic events of Sept. 11 have compelled us to carefully review all
>of the information we make available to the public over the Internet in
>a new light," Elaine Stanley, an Environmental Protection Agency
>official, told a House subcommittee earlier this month.
>
>But academicians, public interest groups, media representatives and
>others warn of an overreaction.
>
>"Do you pull all the Rand McNally atlases from the libraries? I mean,
>how far do you go?" asked Julia Wallace, head of the government
>publications library at the University of Minnesota.
>
>"I'm certainly worried by what I've seen," said Gary Bass, executive
>director of OMB Watch, a nonprofit group in Washington that monitors the
>Office of Management and Budget and advocates greater access to
>government data on environmental and other issues.
>
>"In an open society such as ours, you always run the risk that someone
>is going to use information in a bad way," Bass said. "You have to take
>every step to minimize those risks without undermining our democratic
>principles. You can't just shut down the flow of information."
>
>It's a fine line acknowledged by Stanley. "[The] EPA is aware that we
>need a balance between protecting sensitive information in the interest
>of national security and maintaining access to the information that
>citizens can use to protect their health and the environment in their
>communities."
>
>The Sept. 11 hijackers, using readily accessible tools like box cutters,
>the Internet and Boeing flight manuals, hatched a plot too brazen for
>many to fathom. It forced authorities to consider whether a range of
>public sites and sensitive facilities was much more vulnerable than they
>had realized--and whether public records could provide a playbook for
>targeting them.
>
>Officials acknowledge that there are very few examples of terrorists
>actually using public records to glean sensitive information, but they
>say that the terrorist attacks prove the need for extraordinary caution.
>
>The first directive by the Government Printing Office, made last month
>at the request of the U.S. Geological Survey, ordered libraries to
>destroy a water resources guide. While documents have been pulled before
>because they contained mistakes or were outdated, this was the first
>time in memory that documents were destroyed because of security
>concerns, said Francis Buckley, superintendent of documents for the
>printing office.
>
>Because the water survey was published and owned by the U.S. Geological
>Survey, the libraries that participate in the depository program said
>they had little choice but to comply. Some librarians asked if they
>could simply pull the CD from shelves and put it in a secure place, but
>federal officials told them it had to be destroyed.
>
>"I hate to do it," said Christine Gladish, government information
>librarian at Cal State Los Angeles, which has pulled the water survey
>from its collection and is preparing to destroy it. "Libraries don't
>like to censor information. Freedom of information is a professional
>tenet."
>
>Peter Graham, university librarian at Syracuse University, said:
>"Destruction seems to be the least desirable option to me. . . . We're
>all waiting for the other shoe to drop. Are we going to see a lot more
>withdrawals [of documents]? That's my fear."
>
>In fact, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is reviewing publications
>that it has made available through the Government Printing Office,
>Buckley said, and it is almost certain to ask for the destruction of
>some of its titles.
>
>Some have resisted the push to limit access, even on such nerve-rattling
>subjects as anthrax.
>
>The American Society for Microbiology's Web site--an extensive
>collection of research articles, news releases and expert
>testimony--includes information about antibiotic-resistant anthrax.
>After anthrax-laced letters contaminated the nation's mail system,
>members of the society debated whether a determined individual could
>find and misuse the information on its site.
>
>"We . . . decided not to remove it," said Dr. Ronald Atlas,
>president-elect of the scientific organization. "The principle right now
>is one of openness in science. . . . If someone wants to publish [a
>legitimate research paper], we're not going to be the censor."
>
>But that position has drawn scorn from some of Atlas' colleagues.
>
>"We have to get away from the ethos that knowledge is good, knowledge
>should be publicly available, that information will liberate us," said
>University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur Caplan. "Information will
>kill us in the techno-terrorist age, and I think it's nuts to put that
>stuff on Web sites."
>
>The debate about sensitive information is not a new one. A quarter of a
>century ago, Princeton University undergraduate John Phillips pointed
>out the dangers of nuclear weapons when he was able to use publicly
>available sources to design a crude but functional nuclear bomb.
>
>Phillips, who now heads a political consulting firm in Washington, said
>in a recent interview that cutting off the flow of information after
>Sept. 11 is merely a "cosmetic" change when what is really needed are
>better means of securing access to nuclear and chemical facilities and
>supplies.
>
>Members of the public will be the ones to suffer, he said. "Restricting
>information may make us feel good, but terrorists aren't dumb. They'll
>still be able to get at this information somehow."
>
>In the past, it has taken a tragedy to buck the trend toward more and
>greater public access. That's what happened in California in 1989 after
>actress Rebecca Schaeffer was shot to death at her Los Angeles home by
>an obsessed fan who used publicly available motor vehicle records to
>find out where she lived. The state quickly cut off public access to
>such records.
>
>Indeed, chemical and water industry groups are lobbying the Bush
>administration to curtail regulations providing public access to the
>operations of public facilities, data that environmentalists say are
>critical to ensuring safety.
>
>And nongovernment entities such as the Federation of American Scientists
>have begun curtailing information.
>
>Group Clears Pages From its Web Site
>
>The group recently pulled 200 pages from its Web site with information
>on nuclear storage facilities and other government sites. For a group
>known for promoting open information, it was "an awkward decision,"
>concedes Steven Aftergood, director of the federation's government
>secrecy project.
>
>"But Sept. 11 involved attacks on buildings, and we realized some of the
>information we had up [on the Web] seemed unnecessarily detailed,
>including floor plans and certain photographs that didn't seem to add
>much to public policy debate and conceivably could introduce some new
>vulnerabilities," he said.
>
>"Everyone is now groping toward a new equilibrium," Aftergood said.
>"There are obviously competing pressures that cannot easily be
>reconciled. The critics of disclosure are saying that we are exposing
>our vulnerabilities to terrorists. The proponents of disclosure say that
>it's only by identifying our vulnerabilities that we have any hope of
>correcting them. I suspect that both things are true."

-- 


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu
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