Government Computer News
Some feds welcome order to scrub Web
Digg
De.licio.us
Slashdot
Technorati
Image:
FAA’s Arthur Pyster says the memo only reinforces what the agency was doing already.
But several agency officials welcomed the memo, which they consider additional guidance in their effort to prevent potentially dangerous information from falling into the wrong hands.
“The memo helps give us a clear idea in the process of review, but does not alter the process that has been going on,” said Alfonso Aguilar, an Energy Department spokesman. He said Energy since Sept. 11 has continuously examined the information it posts on the Web.
The memo, sent March 19 by Andrew Card, the president’s chief of staff, orders executive department heads to immediately remove any sensitive information regarding weapons of mass destruction.
“Government information, regardless of its age, that could reasonably be expected to assist in the development or use of weapons of mass destruction, including information about the current locations of stockpiles of nuclear materials that could be exploited for use in such weapons, should not be disclosed inappropriately,” Card wrote.
Drafted by the Justice Department’s Office of Information and Privacy, the memo directs agencies to classify or reclassify information that could be used in the development of weapons of mass destruction and also examine unclassified information.
Privacy concerns
Most agencies have been scanning their sites since Sept. 11 and have removed thousands of documents from the Web, but some advocates for freedom of information have raised fresh concerns about the memo.
Steven Aftergood, who directs the government secrecy project of the Washington nonprofit Federation of American Scientists, said the memo fails to define what is sensitive information.
“It’s bad policy because it gives agencies unilateral discretion to adopt their own information policy,” he said. “What we may see is that wholesale information is being removed from the Web sites.”
He pointed out that agencies have an interest in withholding information from the public.
“They can withhold information to evade oversight and protect controversial programs from public awareness,” Aftergood said. “Agencies can consider such information as sensitive and withhold it. Public access will suffer.”
The memo was prompted by a recent New York Times article listing federal agencies that continue to post chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear information online, according to a Defense Department official.
Kurt Molholm, administrator of the Defense Technical Information Center within the Defense Information Systems Agency, said the article named DTIC as an agency that posted information that could be harmful to the United States. DTIC has pulled 6,600 documents, mostly old studies that were released because they were declassified, from its Web site and is reviewing them.
![1105 Government Information Group [happiness]](/images/1105logo_website.gif "Government Computer News [happiness]")
© 1996-2008 1105 Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
