For other news articles and analyses on homeland security policies and their affect on information and access, please see the Homeland Security section of our website.

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Department of Energy

Department of Health and Human Services

Department of Interior

The Department of Transportation

Department of the Treasury

Environmental Protection Agency

In preparation of the extensive re-filing of RMPs that occurred in 2004, EPA proposed several modifications to the RMP in a July 2003 proposed rule. The changes included eliminating the requirement for OCA information in the Executive Summary section of the RMPs. EPA stated that "removing OCA data from executive summaries would reduce or eliminate any risk that Internet posting of executive summaries might pose." The rule was finalized on April 9, 2004, however the RMP data has yet to be reposted.

RMPs created an enormous controversy two years ago when the first round of data was to be posted to the Internet. One section of the RMP provided an Offsite Consequence Analysis (OCA) that required chemical companies to describe what could happen under worst-case scenarios. Needless to say, chemical companies did not want to disclose that nearby families were living or working by a place that could seriously injure or kill them. With encouragement from the chemical manufacturers, the FBI noted that posting the OCA data on the Internet would increase the chances of a terrorist attack. Congress quickly followed suit with a law to prohibit government from posting the OCA data unless the President decided otherwise. Accordingly, EPA posted the RMP, minus the OCA, to its website. With extremely narrow permissions, the law and proposed subsequent regulations allowed the public to go to designated reading rooms where they could review, but not copy, a select number of the OCAs.

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

National Archives and Records Administration

The National Archives and Records Administration removed archival materials from its website. In its Research Room, under the heading "Access to Archival Materials in the Context of Concern about Terrorism," the agency explains that, "In light of the terrorist events of September 11, we are re-evaluating access to some previously open archival materials . . . NARA seeks to reduce the risk of providing access to materials that might support terrorist activity." Also on the page, NARA gives its authority for removing the documents and explains how concerns of terrorism will affect the way it has been providing access to records.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NASA Glenn Research Center has limited its web access to the public . At one time, its homepage included the message, "Public access to many of our websites is temporarily limited. We apologize for any inconvenience." Though this statement is no longer there, it is not clear if all information has been reposted to the website.NASA Watch received an email from an unnamed NASA employee that read, "Just wanted to let you know that the entire NASA Glenn Research Center webpage has been offline since Friday, Oct 19 [2001]. We can access the pages online but nothing is visible to the outside. Even the computer services folks who keep us up to date on stuff like this are being tight-lipped. Seems people who are complaining are being told to talk to the center director, Don Campbell and that the decision to 'turn Glenn off' was made by him..." The webpage has since been restored; however, it is unclear how much information was removed.

. At one time, its homepage included the message, "Public access to many of our websites is temporarily limited. We apologize for any inconvenience." Though this statement is no longer there, it is not clear if all information has been reposted to the website.NASA Watch received an email from an unnamed NASA employee that read, "Just wanted to let you know that the entire NASA Glenn Research Center webpage has been offline since Friday, Oct 19 [2001]. We can access the pages online but nothing is visible to the outside. Even the computer services folks who keep us up to date on stuff like this are being tight-lipped. Seems people who are complaining are being told to talk to the center director, Don Campbell and that the decision to 'turn Glenn off' was made by him..." The webpage has since been restored; however, it is unclear how much information was removed. NASA has removed public access to its Orbital Information Group. This program offered access to unclassified space surveillance data. Distribution of the information ended March 31, 2005. The information is now available through a program called Space-Track, but the website says, "Due to existing National Security Restrictions pertaining to access of and use of U.S. Government-provided information and data, all users accessing this web site must be an approved registered user to access data on this site." In the registration process users must agree "not to transfer any data or technical information received under the agreement, including the analysis of tracking data, to any other entity without the express approval of the DoD." Apparently, the Department of Defense removed the information because of concerns about people interfering with the satellites.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission completely shut down its website, and more recently restored "select content." The NRC posted a note to its site on Oct. 11, 2001, saying "Our site is not operational at this time. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has taken the action to shut down its website. In support of our mission to protect public health and safety, we are performing a review of all material on our site. We appreciate your patience and understanding during these difficult times." NRC once again removed access to its public reading room in late October 2004 after "sensitive" documents were found on its site. Instead of removing just the sensitive documents, it shut down the whole site. The agency restored portions of the site in December 2004, but many documents have not been restored.

Information removed from state websites

As we are unable to track all takedowns for the 50 states and D.C., this is a list of what we were notified of in 2001 and 2002.

View list by state: Florida | New Jersey |New York | Pennsylvania

Florida

The state of Florida is withholding public access to information on crop dusters and certain driver's license information, and the state legislature may convene new closed committees to prepare for possible terrorism, according to this article.

New Jersey

The state of New Jersey has removed chemical information from its website. New Jersey is now withholding Internet access to information -- collected under its Community Right-to-Know Survey -- on 30,000 private sector facilities that must report on chemical storage, including quantities and types of containers, for about 1,000 to 1,200 different chemicals. This information had been available online for about 18 months. Firefighters were increasingly using this data, accessing it on the way to fires.

New York

On January 17, 2002, James K. Kallstrom, Director of the Office of Public Security and James G. Natoli, Director of the Office of State Operations in New York, issued a confidential memo to agency heads and commissioners on "agency sensitive information." The memo instructs agencies to review all "sensitive" information held by the agency and what information is made publicly accessible via the Internet, freedom of information, or other ways. Sensitive information should no longer be made available to the public except where specifically required by law. Logs over the past year of who has accessed sensitive information should be made available to the Office of Public Security and the Office of State Operations. All of this was to be accomplished by February 17 and certified by agency heads through a confidential report.

Pennsylvania

The state of Pennsylvania has decided to remove environmental information from its website. Pennsylvania's site hosts, or used to host, environmental data on things such as water and air quality, as well as mining operations and soil conditions. This data was removed shortly before Sept. 11 for server maintenance, according to the Oct. 5 Allentown Morning Call. Now, following the attacks, the state is planning to withhold some information previously available, though at the moment it is not saying what that data will be.