[net-gold] Secrecy News -- 04/19/10
- From: "David P. Dillard" <jwne@xxxxxxxxxx>
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- Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2010 03:46:38 -0400 (EDT)
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Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 12:33:45 -0400
From: Steven Aftergood <saftergood@xxxxxxx>
To: saftergood@xxxxxxx
Subject: Secrecy News -- 04/19/10
SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2010, Issue No. 31
April 19, 2010
Secrecy News Blog:
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
** DHS SAYS IT CANNOT STOP PRIVATE POSTING OF SENSITIVE INFO
** "TORTURE AND THE OLC," AND OTHER NEW HEARING VOLUMES
** ODNI REPORT ON DATA MINING: WE DON'T DO IT
DHS SAYS IT CANNOT STOP PRIVATE POSTING OF SENSITIVE INFO
The law does not authorize the Department of Homeland Security to regulate
or penalize the publication of sensitive transportation security-related
information on private websites, the Department advised Congress recently.
Last December, the Transportation Security Administration inadvertently
posted a manual marked "sensitive security information" that described
procedures for screening of airline passengers. Following its discovery,
the manual was removed from government websites, but it had already been
mirrored on non-governmental websites that continue to host the document.
What is DHS going to do about that?, several members of Congress wanted to
know. The answer is this: nothing.
"How has the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security
Administration addressed the repeated reposting of this security manual to
other websites and what legal action, if any, can be taken to compel its
removal?" wrote Reps. Peter T. King (R-NY), Charles W. Dent (R-PA) and Gus
M. Bilirakis (R-FL) on December 9. ("Disclosure of TSA Manual Stirs Leak
Anxiety," Secrecy News, December 10, 2009.)
"No action has been initiated by the agency to address reposting on other
web sites," DHS replied in a February 7 response that was released this
month under the Freedom of Information Act. Existing "statutes do not
provide specific authority to remedy the dissemination of SSI [sensitive
security information] by noncovered persons [who are not subject to DHS
jurisdiction]."
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2010/04/dhs-ssi.pdf
If Congress wanted to try to compel removal of such material from public
websites, DHS said, "specific new statutory authority... would be necessary
to provide enhanced legal support to pursue the full range of civil and
criminal remedies against unauthorized dissemination of SSI by persons who
are not covered persons as defined by 49 C.F.R. §1520.7."
"TORTURE AND THE OLC," AND OTHER NEW HEARING VOLUMES
By authorizing extreme interrogation methods and defining them as legally
permissible, the Bush Administration's Office of Legal Counsel enabled "our
country's descent into torture," said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) last
year at a contentious hearing of a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee that he
chaired. The hearing presented contrasting views on a range of related
issues, including whether or not the Bush Administration's "enhanced
interrogation" program constituted torture under international law. The 695
page record of the hearing was published late last month, with voluminous
attachments and submissions for the record. See "What Went Wrong: Torture
and the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush Administration," May 13, 2009:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2009_hr/wrong.html
Other noteworthy new congressional hearing volumes include the following.
"The Proposed U.S.-UAE Agreement on Civilian Nuclear Cooperation," Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, October 7, 2009 (published March 2010):
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2009_hr/uae-nuclear.pdf
"The Impact of U.S. Export Controls on National Security, Science and
Technological Leadership," House Foreign Affairs Committee, January 15, 2010
(published March 2010):
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2010_hr/export.pdf
ODNI REPORT ON DATA MINING: WE DON'T DO IT
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence says it does not
practice data mining in the narrow sense of searching databases to find
anomalous patterns that could be indicative of terrorist activity. So the
latest ODNI annual report to Congress on data mining programs (the third
such report) has little new information to offer.
Instead of data mining, narrowly defined, the ODNI and other intelligence
agencies use "link analysis," which involves searches that begin with a
known or suspected terrorist or intelligence target and work backwards and
forwards from there. But such "link analysis" is outside the strict
definition of "data mining," ODNI says, and so it is not discussed further
in the new annual report.
http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/datamining10.pdf
_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation
of American Scientists.
The Secrecy News Blog is at:
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
To SUBSCRIBE to Secrecy News, go to:
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Support the FAS Project on Government Secrecy with a donation:
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_______________________
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web: www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email: saftergood@xxxxxxx
voice: (202) 454-4691
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