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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (62514)	12/20/2002 3:05:49 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

The Truth about homeland security...it stinks.... once again..the public be damned while Fortune 500 companies profit from the country's misfortune... Traitorous corporations reap profits at taxpayers' expense...American corporations that go out of their way to be bad citizens, and choose to declare allegiance to Cyprus or the Cayman Islands to save a few bucks are rewarded in the name of "homeland security." thenation.com Holes in the Homeland Security Act 12/19/2002 @ 10:17am E-mail this Post Remember Paul Wellstone's victory two months ago, when Congress agreed to deny federal government contracts to US companies who dodge taxes? Well, wake up: Wellstone is dead, rest his soul; the elections are over. So naturally the law creating the Department of Homeland Security overturns Wellstone's ban. In other words: American corporations that go out of their way to be bad citizens, and choose to declare allegiance to Cyprus or the Cayman Islands to save a few bucks are rewarded in the name of "homeland security." It seems that nothing - not even defending America from terrorists -- is too solemn to be exploited. But of all the ugly ironies in the Homeland Security Act of 2002, the ugliest is a provision giving corporations carte blanche to declare their various embarrassments "Top Secret." An American corporation can now hand just about any sort of information to the new DHS - and if it's accompanied by a one-page assertion that it involves "critical infrastructure" and has been "voluntarily submitted," the data will enjoy an unprecedented level of secrecy. It cannot be revealed to the public via the Freedom of Information Act, or via similar sunshine laws at the state level; it cannot be used in civil legal action, whether private or government; it cannot be cited by, say, the EPA or OSHA or any other health or safety or environmental regulator; and if a DHS employee finds it shocking enough to turn whistleblower and unveil it, he or she would face criminal charges. So what is America's "critical infrastructure?" "The bill defines 'critical infrastructure information' very broadly. It could be anything," says Jon Devine Jr., a lawyer with the Washington-based Natural Resources Defense Council. The law's protections kick in as long as there is an expressed statement attached that the information submitted is critical -- and there is no clear mechanism for reviewing those claims. So as of now, a "voluntarily submitted" rubber-stamp is apparently the functional equivalent of "Classified". Some in the business community have been lobbying for the "voluntarily submitted" stamp for years. The idea first surfaced in the realm of "cyber security," back in the days of quaint worries like Y2K and "an electronic Pearl Harbor." The justification offered at hearings on the Homeland Security Act went like this: From chemical plants to oil pipelines, water supplies to computer systems, nuclear reactors to electricity grids, we have dire vulnerabilities to crude terrorist attacks. Companies that manage this infrastructure know these vulnerabilities best - but they aren't sharing the information, for fear it will find its way into the public arena (opening them to punitive action by courts or government regulators). Therefore, before corporations will discuss their secret fears, they want assurances those secrets won't be turned against them. This begs a host of questions: 1. What good is it if the government knows all these "secrets" --but is severly limited in being able to act against them? The government can't bring civil or regulatory actions on the strength of "voluntarily submitted" information -- so what's the point? 2. If companies are aware of these vulnerabilities, why aren't they addressing them? 3. What happens if "critical infrastructure" provider - a liquefied natural gas terminal, say - dumps data about its lax security on to DHS, and then six months down the road becomes a terrorist nightmare? Independent investigators who try to piece together what happened will find it extremely difficult to discern "what did the government know and when did it know it." In reality, the vulnerabilities of electric grids, water supplies, nuclear reactors and chemical plants have been widely available - and are certainly known to terrorists who have been kicking the tires of our crop dusters. So this is much more about avoiding public anger, and protecting profits from angry courts and juries, than about homeland security. The exact details of vulnerabilities, by the way, would never be released under the 36-year-old Freedom of Information Act, a sensible law that has all sorts of exemptions to prevent dangerous disclosures. David Sobel, a lawyer for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, notes that utility companies, telecoms and other backers of the "voluntarily submitted" secrecy provision have not been able to offer a single hypothetical in which dangerous information would have gone public via a FOIA request. And what about the Enrons and WorldComs? "We are discussing the desire of private companies to keep secret potentially embarrassing information at a time when the disclosure practices of many in the business world are being scrutinized," Sobel testified before Congress this summer. "If a company is willing to fudge its financial numbers to maintain its stock price, it would be similarly inclined to hide behind a 'critical infrastructure' FOIA exemption in order to conceal gross negligence in its maintenance and operation of a chemical plant or a transportation system." The new "voluntarily submitted" secrecy protection "guts the FOIA at the expense of our national security and public health and safety," says Senator Patrick Leahy. "Public health and law enforcement officials need the flexibility to decide how and when to warn or prepare the public in the safest, most effective manner. They should not have to get 'sign off' from a Fortune 500 company to do so."

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (62514)	12/20/2002 3:13:11 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

I consider The Nation to be one of the most biased, leftwing magazines in the country, and if it takes a position, I am likely to take the opposite position. I actually knew a woman who contributed a lot of money to The Nation to keep it going, an heiress. She is the only person I ever met who was sorry that the Soviet bloc fell, and who deplored the reunion of East with West Germany, on the grounds that the East's experiment with socialism would cease........

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (62514)	12/20/2002 6:29:10 PM
From: PartyTime	Respond to of 281500

>>>The only evidence that suggesta such a connection was chief hjacker Mohamed Atta's supposed pre-9/11 meeting in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence agent. Both Czech and US officials have now authoritatively discounted such a meeting.<<< Karen, the above excerpt from your post is noteworthy. Why? Because I think most Americans--themselves unwitting victims to propaganda wars--probably think the Iraqi agent and Atta meeting actually happened. Heck, there's probably still some folks thinking the DC-area snipers were driving a white vehicle. And we're still being coddled by news pundits that Turkey's ready to move in just as soon as the American war trumpets sound; however, Turkey's official position is that it specifically wants the United Nations to support any military action against Iraq. And you know what? Even though Lott has now resigned, the Willie Horton prisoners are still going through the revolving gate, at least as some folks would see it. Oh, well!