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List:       isn
Subject:    [ISN] Bush order covers Internet secrets
From:       InfoSec News <isn () c4i ! org>
Date:       2003-03-27 9:49:09
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http://news.com.com/2100-1028-994216.html

By Declan McCullagh 
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
March 26, 2003

President George W. Bush has signed an executive order that explicitly 
gives the government the power to classify information about critical 
infrastructures such as the Internet. 

Bush late Tuesday changed the definition of what the government may 
classify as confidential, secret and top-secret to include details 
about "infrastructures" and weapons of mass destruction. The new 
executive order also makes clear that information related to "defense 
against transnational terrorism" is classifiable. 

In his executive order, which replaces a 1995 directive signed by 
President Bill Clinton, Bush said that information that already had 
been declassified and released to the public could be reclassified by 
a federal agency. Clinton's order said that "information may not be 
reclassified after it has been declassified and released to the 
public." 

David Sobel, general counsel to the Electronic Privacy Information 
Center, said it was unclear why the Bush administration decided to 
include the term infrastructure. An existing category of scientific, 
technological or economic matters relating to national security might 
have covered information about the Internet and other critical 
infrastructures, Sobel said. 

"It's a mystery to me why there was a feeling that the old order 
needed to be revised and expanded," Sobel said. 

The definition of what may be properly classified typically becomes an 
issue when a lawsuit is filed under the Freedom of Information Act 
seeking to force the government to divulge documents that it claims 
are secret and properly classified. Bush's decision gives the U.S. 
Justice Department, which defends agency classification decisions in 
court, more leeway in fighting such lawsuits. 

Clinton's 1995 order said one of the seven categories of information 
that could be classified was: "vulnerabilities or capabilities of 
systems, installations, projects or plans relating to the national 
security." 

Under Bush's order, that definition has been expanded to: 
"vulnerabilities or capabilities of systems, installations, 
infrastructures, projects, plans or protection services relating to 
the national security, which includes defense against transnational 
terrorism." 

Steven Aftergood, an analyst at the Federation of American Scientists 
who tracks government secrecy, says the change in definitions "creates 
an opening that could be exploited in the future, but in practice the 
previous policy would have permitted much of the same thing." 



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