A coalition of environmental groups today formally asked the Department of Homeland Security, the Army Corp of Engineers and Environmental Protection Agency to make public the list of 44 "high hazard" coal ash disposal sites across the country. The Freedom of Information Act request was submitted by the Sierra Club, Earthjustice, the Environmental Integrity Project, and Natural Resources Defense Council after the EPA refused to disclose which of the hundreds of coal ash sites pose such a threat to nearby communities that they have been deemed by the Obama administration to be a national security risk."The Department of Homeland Security has designated 44 massive coal ash piles as 'high hazard' because they present a clear and present danger to the people living near them," said Bruce Nilles, Director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign. "People have a right to know if mountains of toxic coal ash are threatening their communities so they can take action and put pressure on their local utilities to demand clean up."
The EPA was instructed by the Department of Homeland Security not to release information about the location of high hazard dams containing coal ash. Unspecified national security concerns were cited as the reason for withholding this critical information from the public, even though the locations of other hazardous sites, such as nuclear plants are publicly available.
More here.
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a FOIA request for records on laptops searched by border officials, PC Magazine reported. ACLU says these searching practices raise questions concerning First and Fourth Amendment rights because "they involve highly intrusive governmental probing into a traveler's most private information." Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is expected to release updated guidelines regarding these border laptop searches in the next few months.
How many laptops have border officials searched at U.S. borders? The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wants to know.
The group filed a freedom of information (FOIA) request with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Homeland Security Department requesting any and all records dating back to January 1, 2007.
"Disclosure of the requested information ... will further public understanding of the government's expansive exercise of search authority over all travelers, including U.S. citizens, passing through the country's international borders," the letter reads.
More here.
In 1989, in what arguably is the most significant Freedom of Information Act decision ever issued, the Supreme Court in Department of Justice v. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press both broadened the concept of personal privacy and narrowed the definition of the “public interest” in disclosure.Register here.
This decision brought about nothing less than a sea change in privacy protection by radically altering the balancing process by which federal agencies decide whether to invoke the FOIA’s privacy exemptions -- leading to the withholding of greater amounts of information from the public.
Marking the 20th anniversary of this landmark FOIA decision, this program examines Reporters Committee’s full impact on government openness versus the protection of personal privacy and explores its continued viability with the passage of time.
Highlights of the agenda include:
- A keynote address by Jane Kirtley, Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law Director at the University of Minnesota
- Panel discussing the origin of the case, the formulation of the government's position and the unexpected breadth of the Supreme Court's decision
- Panel analyzing the Supreme Court's novel "practical obscurity" concept for protecting personal privacy interests.
- Luncheon address by Mary Ellen Callahan, Chief Privacy Officer and Chief Freedom of Information Act Officer for the Department of Homeland Security
- Panel considering the Reporters Committee "core purpose" standard for determining a limited "public interest" that can be balanced in favor of disclosure
- Panel reviewing the Reporters Committee's impact on FOIA administration, FOIA litigation and implementation of the Privacy Act of 1974
The Thomas More Law Center of Ann Arbor, Mich., says it has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Department of Homeland Security demanding why it calls Americans who oppose abortion, support 2nd Amendment gun rights and dislike lax immigration law enforcement "extremists.""This is not an intelligence report but a diatribe against those who oppose the policies of the Obama administration," said Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel for the organization.
"It is a declaration of war against the American people and our constitution. It is a prelude to extreme gun control legislation and hate speech laws targeting Christian churches and others who oppose abortion and same sex marriage," he continued. "The federal government should be focusing its attention on the 35 radical Muslim compounds in the U.S. training its followers on how to kidnap and kill Americans."
More here.
President Barack Obama is promising to reinvigorate the Freedom of Information Act by opening more of the government's filing cabinets without a fight. It can't happen soon enough for the people awaiting replies to more than 150,000 requests for information.Behind the headlines, The Associated Press wrestles with bizarre administrative hurdles and jaw-dropping contradictions trying to use the law; some recent ones are described below.
Obama has begun to deliver, but there are conflicting signs about how far he will go.
More here.
A judge has ordered the federal government to turn over documents related to the shooting of a fleeing drug smuggler or to explain why it is withholding them. The shooting led to the imprisonment of two Border Patrol agents and later a commutation of their sentences by President George W. Bush. The judge, Richard Leon of Federal District Court, acted in response to a suit by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, which got no response from the Departments of State, Justice and Homeland Security after filing Freedom of Information Act requests two years ago for records relating to the smuggler, Osvaldo Aldrete Davila. Judicial Watch says it wants the government’s records to answer questions about the prosecution of the agents and how regularly the Justice Department offers immunity to drug smugglers to help prosecute law enforcement officers.More here.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security tracked peaceful activists using information shared with the Maryland State Police, government documents show.More here.
Maryland's two senators, Democrats Benjamin Cardin and Barbara Mikulski, and civil libertarians are worried that privacy rules may have been violated by revelations in documents obtained through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, The Washington Post (NYSE:WPO) reported Tuesday.
E-mail obtained by the newspaper indicate Homeland Security was able to track the 2005 protest plans of a peaceful Washington area anti-war group based on information shared with the Maryland State Police, whose spying activities on the DC Anti-War Network, or DAWN, have drawn much criticism.
In a stunning victory for freedom of information advocates, a California appeals court has sustained a public right of access to a government database that makes possible highly accurate digital mapping.Holding that Santa Clara County must make public its geographic information system (GIS) parcel “basemap,” which shows real estate parcel boundaries, appraisals, and other property data, a unanimous Court of Appeal rejected arguments that U.S. Homeland Security regulations and Federal Copyright protection trump the public’s right of access under the California Public Records Act.
More here.
More coverage: Homeland Security Act Does Not Shield County Land Data, Metropolitan News-Enterprise
More here.Months before the Bush administration ends, historians and open-government advocates are concerned that Vice President Cheney, who has long bristled at requirements to disclose his records, will destroy or withhold key documents that illustrate his role in forming U.S. policy for the past 7 1/2 years.
In a preemptive move, several of them have agreed to join the advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington in asking a federal judge to declare that Cheney's records are covered by the Presidential Records Act of 1978 and cannot be destroyed, taken or withheld without proper review.
The group expects to file the lawsuit today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. It will name Cheney, the executive offices of the president and vice president, and the National Archives and chief archivist Allen Weinstein as defendants.
The Texas Department of Public Safety is appealing a court decision that granted the Houston Chronicle and two other newspapers access to travel records filed by members of Gov. Rick Perry's security detail.Attorney General Greg Abbott's office filed notice of appeal Monday with the 3rd Court of Appeals in Austin.
The Chronicle, the San Antonio Express-News and the Austin American-Statesman sued the DPS for refusing to release copies of expense vouchers for troopers' travel with the governor last year and in 2001.
The state contended that releasing the information could endanger the governor, his family and other people traveling with him.
But state District Judge Scott Jenkins questioned that claim and ruled Aug. 1 that the newspapers should be granted access to the records. Attorneys for the newspapers argued that the expense vouchers were "super-public information" that didn't pose a threat to anyone.
Perry usually pays his own travel expenses from political funds, but his bodyguards have spent thousands of taxpayer dollars guarding the governor on trips throughout the U.S. and to several foreign countries.
The newspapers have obtained lump sum amounts of security spending, but the DPS has refused to release expense details.
More here.
Congress on Thursday will take a major step in rolling back the tide of secrecy that has swept through government since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, with the House Homeland Security Committee poised to pass two bills making the Homeland Security Department more transparent.
Both bills are expected to pass the committee easily: One would crack down on too-frequent use of classification, while the other would go after "pseudo-classification" - the new labels such as "for official use only" that have popped up to keep even unclassified documents out of the hands of the public and other government agencies.
"This is more than Congress has been able to do in seven years," said Rep. Jane Harman, California Democrat and the bills' chief sponsor, who said the bills are the result of an alliance of open-government advocates and those who think the government needs to share more information within its agencies for national security reasons.
Rep. Jane Harman, California Democrat, is the chief sponsor of two bills aimed at cracking down on overclassification and pseudo-classification within government agencies.
"The dirtiest four-letter word in government is spelled T-U-R-F, and overclassification and pseudo-classification are ways to protect T-U-R-F," Mrs. Harman said.
The Sept. 11 commission blamed a lack of information-sharing among agencies for intelligence failures before the attack, and Republicans and Democrats both want to make sure that new turf battles won't produce a similar breakdown.
A Homeland Security official said late Wednesday that the department opposes both bills.
More here.
The DPS wrote Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott last week asking for a ruling on whether the tapes must be released to The Associated Press. The AP requested the video the day of the fire using the Texas Public Information Act.
At least three other news organizations also asked for copies of the surveillance tapes shortly after fire severely damaged the 152-year-old mansion the morning of June 8.
DPS contends the tapes are exempt from disclosure because state homeland security laws allow information to be kept confidential if it "relates to the specifications, operating procedures, or location of a security system used to protect public or private property from an act of terrorism or related criminal activity."
Disclosure of the video would "reveal the clarity, range, angle, zoom capabilities, panning capabilities and fields of view of those cameras, as well as their ability to record in little or no light, whether the cameras have infrared or thermal imaging capability, and whether the cameras record in color or black and white," Lopez wrote.
"This information would allow a terrorist or related criminal to discern whether and exactly when a person can be detected and recognized in the areas monitored by the cameras in question," the letter stated.
Releasing the video would reveal whether cameras are real or "dummies;" whether they are constantly running or are motion activated; and for how long videotapes are preserved, the agency contends.
Additionally, DPS said it opposes releasing the video because it could interfere with the ongoing criminal investigation...
In the past, Abbott's office has ruled DPS video surveillance tapes from hallways behind the Texas House of Representatives in the Capitol should be available to the public. The DPS is fighting in court to keep House hallway video from the Texas Observer, a news magazine that made an open records request for videotape recorded in May 2005 when legislators debated private school vouchers.
In the Governor's Mansion video, someone can be seen igniting an object and throwing it onto the porch of the building, fire investigators have already revealed. Investigators say the suspect was wearing a ball cap, a dark shirt, work-type gloves and blue jeans or cargo-style pants.
Only 13 of 20 security cameras on the mansion grounds were working when the fire broke out, and a motion sensor system wasn't working properly, a state official has said.
More here.I like the lead of this story:
In the basement of a building between an IHOP and a car dealership sits the nexus of Virginia’s fight against terror.
There, people who need special clearances pass through layer after layer of security on their way to a conference room so secure no one can have a cell phone or a piece of electronic equipment inside. The door locks alone cost $4,000 apiece.
Most people know little about the Virginia Fusion Center. And if a bill quietly wending through the General Assembly becomes law, they’ll know even less.
The bill, coincidentally named HB1007, would exempt the center’s investigative and intelligence documentation from the state Freedom of Information Act and would shield its employees from subpoenas in civil lawsuits concerning criminal intelligence information or terrorism investigations.
Open government watchdogs decried the bill. They said it goes too far in giving additional furtive powers to a quasi-secret agency. They point to the measure as another cramp to personal freedoms in a post-Sept. 11, 2001, era....
The bill passed the House 98-1, and a Senate panel could hear it this week. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine supports the measure, according to a spokesman.
The Virginia Press Association and the Virginia Coalition for Open Government have lobbied against the bill. The Virginian-Pilot is a member of the press association and is a founding partner of the Coalition for Open Government....
Ginger Stanley, executive director of the Virginia Press Association, calls HB1007 “Big Brother at work.”
Stanley said it is understandable to restrict information about terror investigations but that blocking public access to records related to “criminal intelligence” – as the bill reads – is overbroad and could apply to anything.
That would “allow them to keep private every piece of information,” she said. “They need protection to a point, but they take it way beyond that.”
More here.Those incidents were among dozens of detailed, mock disasters confronting officials rapid-fire in the U.S. government's biggest-ever "Cyber Storm" war game, according to hundreds of pages of heavily censored files obtained by The Associated Press. The Homeland Security Department ran the exercise to test the nation's hacker defenses, with help from the State Department, Pentagon, Justice Department, CIA, National Security Agency and others.
The laundry list of fictional catastrophes — which include hundreds of people on "No Fly" lists suddenly arriving at airport ticket counters — is significant because it suggests what kind of real-world trouble keeps the White House awake at night. Railway switches failed. Planes flew too close to the White House. Water utilities in Los Angeles were compromised.
Imagined villains include hackers, bloggers and even reporters. After mock electronic attacks overwhelmed computers at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, an unspecified "major news network" airing reports about the attackers refused to reveal its sources to the government. Other simulated reporters were duped into spreading "believable but misleading" information that worsened fallout by confusing the public and financial markets, according to the government's files...
More here.
A three-judge panel ruled Tuesday in favor of a coalition of pipeline companies that sought to keep certain pipeline data out of the hands of the public and the media.Citing potential terrorist threats and improper procedure by a lower-court judge, the Washington state District of Appeals Division II panel sent the public records requests back to a lower court for a potential trial.
The ruling was disappointing to media organizations, which sought location information on oil and natural gas pipelines.
“I am terribly disappointed,” said Ken Bunting, associate publisher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The P-I, along with several media organizations including The Bellingham Herald, sought the pipeline data. “I understand that people are concerned about the threat of terrorism, but the threat of terrorism has led to some irrational interpretations of law.”
At issue were detailed pipeline data called shapefiles. The data include specific parts of the pipeline, such as compression stations and valves. The information can be placed over other maps to see where those parts are located in conjunction with businesses or homes or perhaps environmentally sensitive areas such as wetlands.
The data were made public by the Pipeline Safety Act of 2000, which was passed after a 1999 pipeline leak explosion that killed three people in Bellingham.
The oil and natural gas companies, with the help of state Rep. Jeff Morris, D-Mount Vernon, and Rep. Kelli Linville, D-Bellingham, nearly closed the data to the public during the 2006 legislative session, but were unsuccessful.
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