As the $350 billion transportation bill winds its way through Congress, few seem to have noticed a broadly-worded provision written by the Bush administration that could render secret nearly all information on transportation--even if the public has a right to know under federal or state law. The provision grants new secrecy authority to the Transportation Security Agency (TSA), now part of the Department of Homeland Security.
"The provision expands an authority already given to the Transportation Security Agency... which originally applied mainly to airport security," according to the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ). "It exempts from the Freedom of Information Act any information that TSA considers 'Sensitive Security Information' (SSI)."
This could include a lot of environmental and public health information, from nuclear waste transport routes to toxic spills near shipping facilities.
"The new legislative language would expand TSA's secrecy-stamp authority beyond air safety to include any ‘transportation facilities or infrastructure, or transportation employees,'" notes the SEJ. "If any state FOI [Freedom of Information] laws currently require disclosure of such information, the new federal law would override them."
Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) introduced the Senate version of the transportation bill, including the secrecy provision, on May 15, 2003. Inhofe, chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, introduced the bill "by request," a term indicating that it was drafted by the Bush administration. "No separate hearings were held on the SSI portion of the bill," according to the SEJ. [1]
Carol Andress, an economic specialist with Environmental Defense, tells BushGreenwatch she has learned the secrecy provision is not slated to be discussed in a House-Senate conference, and thus would stay in the bill. The legislation's ultimate wording may be a mystery until it is out of conference.
If signed into law, the new secrecy language could shut out journalists and the public from important environmental information. Possible scenarios include:
-The Transportation Security Administration deciding that the conditions of a county's rail infrastructure are "Sensitive Security Information," even if poor track maintenance increases the risk of derailments and hazmat spills.
-Restriction of legally required Department of Transportation annual and biennial reports on hazardous materials incidents, presumably because they might reveal security weaknesses.
-Restricting the public's right to know about road and rail transportation routes for nuclear waste, because they could be terrorist targets. This would make it difficult for concerned citizens to learn about and oppose routes through heavily populated areas. [2]
Environmental Defense's Andress tells BushGreenwatch that it may be hard to focus attention on the secrecy provision. The transportation bill is already extremely complex, with multi-million dollar highway and mass transit projects on the line.
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SOURCES:
[1] "Senate Highway Bill Gives TSA Broad New Secrecy Powers," SEJ TipSheet, Jun. 16, 2004.
[2] Ibid.
