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Date Posted: 23:42:26 11/18/01 Sun
Author: Colorado Oak
Author Host/IP: gdjt-apa-nas01pool245.dnvr.uswest.net / 63.224.92.245
Subject: What we know can hurt us? (Long!!)

Rising Fears That What We Do Know Can Hurt Us
--------------------

Information: The government is pulling back on previously shared data to keep it
from aiding terrorists.

By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Times Staff Writer

November 18 2001

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-111801inform.story

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."

_ _ _

Times staff writer Aaron Zitner contributed to this report.

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