[iwar] [fc:Risks.Prompt.U.S..To.Limit.Access.to.Data]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2002-02-25 06:35:12
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Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2002 06:35:12 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [iwar] [fc:Risks.Prompt.U.S..To.Limit.Access.to.Data]
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Risks Prompt U.S. To Limit Access to Data

By Ariana Eunjung Cha, Washington Post, 2/24/02
<a href="http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/174727.html">http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/174727.html>

The letter from the government told Joy Suh to destroy the CD-ROM of the
nation's water supply data "by any means." Suh, the documents librarian
at George Mason University, immediately asked her assistant to get out
her scissors and cut the silver disk into tiny shards.

Suh was eager to do her part to help protect the country.

But as someone who has dedicated her life to sharing information with
the public, she worried that this directive signaled the beginning of a
more secretive period in American society.

"I debate both sides in my mind. I see the government aspect of it. I
also see how researchers and the public might need this data," Suh said.

Since Sept. 11, the Bush administration has gone to what academics,
lawmakers and civil-liberties proponents describe as unprecedented
lengths to control the dissemination of information in the name of
national security, escalating the debate over how to balance protection
with the public's right to know.

The Internal Revenue Service reading room on Constitution Avenue NW now
requires visitors to be shadowed by an employee at all times. The
National Imagery and Mapping Agency no longer sells its detailed digital
maps on the Internet. And since October various government agencies have
been stripping their Web sites of such data as security plans of
hazardous chemical sites and information about weapons of mass
destruction or aviation accident reports.

In a few weeks, the government plans to announce a new set of guidelines
for what kind of security information should be withheld.

There are now about 30 bills pending in Congress that attempt to
redefine what the government is required to release to the public under
the federal Freedom of Information Act. Earlier this month Richard A.
Clarke, the White House's top information security adviser, urged
lawmakers to quickly pass an exemption for information about computer
attacks.

"The biggest thing that Congress could do to achieve cyberspace security
this term is to pass a very, very narrowly crafted amendment" to the
act, he said.

One of the first changes to the FOI law went into effect about two
months ago, allowing agencies to withhold potentially sensitive data
such as maps about transportation networks.

"It has always been true that in times of war you don't release battle
plans to the enemy," said Sen. Robert F. Bennett, R-Utah, who is
co-sponsoring a bill with Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.

Federal officials have grown increasingly concerned about how to handle
the release of information as evidence mounts that Osama bin Laden and
his supporters may have used readily available government documents to
plan terrorist attacks. Data stored on computers apparently used by al
Qaeda operatives included public reports about crop-dusting and a
General Accounting Office study detailing security vulnerabilities in 19
federal buildings and two airports.

A report titled "Source-Area Characteristics of Large Public
Surface-Water Supplies in the Conterminous United States" had been
housed at George Mason and about 300 other federal depositories until it
was removed this winter at the request of the U.S. Geological Survey.
The agency was concerned the data on pipes that tap into dams and
reservoirs could be used to aid a chemical or biological attack. FBI
agents visited several libraries to ensure that the document was truly
removed from circulation.

Karen Williams, who oversees digital initiatives and special collections
at the University of Arizona, said a clerk destroyed the institution's
copy without thinking about the implications. It is an action Williams
regrets. The library's administration has since decided that if a
similar request from the government comes in the future, it would seek
legal counsel first.

"I hope that we would act with caution and be absolutely certain that
any information that gets pulled is dangerous information," Williams
said.

State and local governments, and even companies and individuals, have
been following the federal government's lead in making it more difficult
for people to gain access to sensitive information.

In Virginia, Dels. S. Chris Jones, R-Suffolk, and Clifton A. "Chip"
Woodrum, D-Roanoke, and Sen. Kenneth W. Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, have
introduced legislation that would allow public officials to withhold
information that might aid terrorists, such as architectural plans for
buildings. A bill proposed last month by Maryland Gov. Parris N.
Glendening, D, would allow a government official to deny access to
records if it is deemed to "constitute a risk to the public or to public
safety."

Measures such as these disturb people like Gary Bass, executive director
of OMB Watch, a group that advocates public disclosure.

"While security may improve, the spirit of civil society is lost. We
cannot let that happen here," Bass wrote in a post-Sept. 11 assessment
of his group's mission.

One of the most contentious debates has been between, on one side,
government officials who believe that information about hazardous
chemical sites should be kept away from potential terrorists and, on the
other side, environmentalists and other groups that contend the public
should have this information to address any health concerns. Another
debate has been between Defense Department officials, who want to make
sure their research isn't used to create weapons, and scientists, who
say that new limitations on information-sharing may stifle innovation.

Finding the right balance is difficult. Some groups that traditionally
favor full disclosure - consumer groups, academics and the press - have
come to support certain restrictions since the September terrorist
attacks.

Michael Levi is in charge of a project at the Federation of American
Scientists that provides analysis on national security policies. He is
now reviewing the group's Web site of more than 1 million pages and
already has removed information such as satellite photos of nuclear
facilities and reports on high-tension areas, including India and
Afghanistan. "We often err quite strongly on the side of caution," Levi
said.

A spokeswoman for Internet search engine Google said the Mountain View,
Calif., company had been coordinating with federal agencies to make sure
that material the government deleted from its sites is not still
available to the public through automatic-saving functions on the
company's system.

Sen. Bennett and his supporters said that private companies running much
of the country's critical telephone, power and banking infrastructure
need assurances that their proprietary secrets won't be shared as they
coordinate security and emergency procedures with the government.

"Certainly if you're a CEO and you discovered a virus, it would be a
problem for you if you told the federal government and it told a
potential competitor," said Robert Hoffman, director of legislative
affairs for high-tech giant Oracle Corp.

Or worse. "You don't have to be a law-abiding U.S. citizen to file a
FOIA request. You could be a lawyer for Osama bin Laden," Bennett said.

Bennett argues that exempting such information from public purview does
little to limit public access since much of the data is privately held.
But critics worry that the restrictions could be used to suppress data
that goes beyond national security concerns. Bennett's bill, for
example, would keep private any information about critical
infrastructure services that is voluntarily shared with a federal agency
for "analysis, warning, interdependency study, recovery, reconstitution,
or other informational purpose."

The shrinking pool of readily available government documents makes
George Mason's Suh wonder how far the restrictions will reach. "Will we
soon be taking away books on gunpowder and bombs?" she asked.

Government departments such as commerce, defense and energy have already
removed thousands of documents from public access.

The Energy Department decided to suppress about 9,000 documents from its
Information Bridge Web service. Many of them are scientific research
papers from national labs that contain keywords such as "nuclear" or
"chemical" and "storage." Department employees are reviewing the papers
to see if they pose national security risks and are re-posting those
found to be benign.

Walter Warnick, director of the agency's Office of Scientific and
Technical Information, acknowledged in an interview that the review may
take many months and that some legitimate research may be delayed as a
result.

Still, "we were obliged to act quickly, and we did. The longer we would
have waited, the more the risk to the country," he said.

As for the CD-ROM that went into her trash can, Suh said she suspects
pirated copies of the data may still exist, hidden in file drawers or
the vast memory of the Internet. Among the nation's librarians, there
are already rumors that some ignored the government's request to destroy
the discs and simply filed the information away, in anticipation of a
day when worries about terrorists are no longer so acute.

Reported by The Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com 
.

08:12 CST

(20020224/WIRES TOP, ONLINE, LEGAL, BUSINESS/GOVTSECURITY/PHOTO)

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

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