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Congressman Henry Waxman, the ranking member on the Committee for Government Reform, had committee staff release a report on Government Secrecy, focussing on the Freedom of Information Act, the abuse of the "Sensitive Security Information" designation (SSI) by government employees, and Bush Administration presidential directives that will keep presidential files out of the hands of historians for years to come.
The report (PDF) -- while admittedly a partisan effort --, convincingly details this administration's extreme emphasis on secrecy.
Here's another example, taken from a FOIA released by the Army in response to a request for records about the JetBlue/Torch Concepts data transfer. For those of you who don't remember the details, the Army hired Torch Concepts to test a data-mining algorithm to see if it pre-emptively tell the difference between terrorists and regular airline passengers. The Army says the study was intended to help with Army facility security.
Torch, with JetBlue's permission, augmented JetBlue's passenger records with social security numbers, addresses, and financial information it purchased from Acxiom, a massive data marketing firm linked to CAPPS II and the Total Information Awareness program.
The first image comes from the recommendation page in a report given to a homeland security conference in 2003. That report was found on the Internet by Edward Hasbrouck and can be found in full here (PDF).
The following image is what the Army decided was too sensitive to reveal, even though this document is still available on the Internet.
Now the Army says it has no intention of going forward with its program and there is no evidence I'm aware of that they have or are pursuing access to airline passenger records for a base security program.
But if that's so, why is the Army afraid to make it public that its contractor found that it would be useful for the government to have a "lifetime" accounting of your travels?
My less-paranoid guess? FOIA officials believe that anything that looks embarrassing or revelatory should be redacted, regardless of whether there is actually a covering exemption. And since the law has no punishment for over-redacting and the Attorney General has said his lawyers will defend most any redaction, that's why FOIA requests are generally exercises in frustration.
The Army also prepared a report on the study for an oversight committee (TAPAC). Links to all testimony to the committee here and links to the Army's presentation is here.
Dr. Thomas H. Killion, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology/Chief Scientist gave the presentation.
The Army gave me a copy of his testimony (which I'd already seen), but blacked out one thing. Dr. Killion's name on the front page of the document.
It's absurd to argue that his privacy would be invaded by releasing his name on a report delivered publicly.
Why did they do it? Why not? There's no penalty for blocking it out.
Still there was some good information in this particular FOIA, and I'll try to get to scanning and analyzing it soon.
And by soon, I mean sooner than the TSA is getting to FOIA requests about JetBlue and about CAPPS II contractors who got airline records from other airlines (despite months of TSA denials to the contrary). Though it's been almost a year since the first of these FOIAs were filed and though they were granted expedited processing (after much unneccessary stonewalling on their part), the TSA has not released any of these documents.
Posted by Ryan Singel at September 15, 2004 04:48 PM
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"But if that's so, why is the Army afraid to make it public that its contractor found that it would be useful for the government to have a "lifetime" accounting of your travels?"
There is an innocent explanation for this redaction.
The Army redacted out the specific information that they were mining for. This would prevent adversaries from determining what information was used to identify potential terrorist. This information could be used to create a legend that would better withstand scrutiny.
By obscuring what information they look for they hope to make it harder for terrorist to evade the system.
Posted by: Shannon Love at September 17, 2004 11:51 AM