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Secrecy and Security News

Newer News: January 2003

December 2002

• Push Is On to Overhaul FBI by Thomas Frank, Newsday, December 29. "A small but significant number of lawmakers and experts are starting to push for an overhaul of the FBI and are talking seriously about creating a new agency to run intelligence inside the United States."
• Database Monitor Far From a Reality by Jim Puzzanghera, San Jose Mercury News, December 26. "Steven Aftergood, a research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists and a critic of the plan, said it could actually end up harming the war on terrorism by diverting law enforcement resources down innumerable dead ends."
• Pearl Harbor planning for $220 million project by Sean Hao, Honolulu Advertiser, December 24. "The military is planning to build a $220 million complex at Pearl Harbor for intelligence gathering and analysis that would be one of the largest projects at the naval base in coming years."
• President Exempts Groom Lake from Disclosure Requirements, Federal Register, December 24.
• Judiciary Panel Adds Surveillance Oversight by Brian Krebs, WashingtonPost.com, December 23. "The Senate Judiciary Committee next year will have its hands full balancing perennial high-tech policy debates with oversight of new federal surveillance and data-gathering powers."
• Feds Seek to Identify People by Odor by Jim Krane, Associated Press, December 19. "The federal agency that created the Internet now challenges scientists to create a detector that could identify people by their unique, genetically determined odor."
• Vanishing Act: The U.S. Government's Disappearing Data by Marylaine Block, SearchDay, December 19. "As we are now discovering, the dark side of web-based information is the ease with which it can be deleted."
• Has Big Brother arrived, and is he watching us?, by James Heaney, Buffalo News, December 15. "Steps taken in the name of fighting terrorism are producing changes in American society that, according to critics spanning the political spectrum, could leave citizens with less personal privacy, a government that operates in greater secrecy and a judicial system that denies some defendants due process."
• Panel report indicates intelligence unreformed, Florida Today, December 14. "Anyone looking for signs of significant progress in overhauling the nation's sprawling network of intelligence agencies won't find it in the final version of a Senate panel's report into the Sept. 11 attacks."
• Interim Final Rule on Possession, Use and Transfer of Biological Agents and Toxins, Dept of Agriculture, Federal Register, December 13.
• Final Rule on Possession, Use and Transfer of Select Agents and Toxins, Dept of Health and Human Services, Federal Register, December 13.
• Intelligence overhaul necessary, panel says, by Mary Jacoby, St. Petersburg Times, December 12. "Unfortunately, the committee members said, some of the most illuminating information about why the overhaul is needed must remain secret."
• Bang! You're Incapacitated, by Brad Knickerbocker, Christian Science Monitor, December 12. "As the United States fights a war on terrorism and prepares for possible war with Iraq, development and advocacy of nonlethal weapons are accelerating."
• Feds Seek to Share More Threat Information Without Security Clearances, by Chuck McCutcheon, Newhouse News, December 11. "The federal government wants to address one of the major flaws identified in homeland security -- the sharing of sensitive threat information -- without granting security clearances to thousands of police and firefighters."
• Panel Proposes Reforms to Try to Prevent Terrorist Attacks, by Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, December 11. "But the proposals were greeted with skepticism from experts and criticism from at least one key senator on the panel for being too soft on the CIA and other intelligence agencies."
• Science in the Service of Security, by Lois Ember, Chemical and Engineering News, December 9. "But some commentators point out, the law creating the Department of Homeland Security also sets up rules that restrict the flow of information to scientists and to the general public and may actually retard progress in securing the homeland."
• Not Henry Kissinger (editorial), San Francisco Chronicle, December 3. "It is true that Kissinger, a master political statesman, has extensive experience in foreign diplomacy. But he is also famous for conducting governmental affairs with secrecy and even deceit."
• NAS Study Shows Messy Reality Tied To Balancing Security, Openness, by Christopher Castelli, Inside the Navy, December 2. "Before a National Academy of Sciences' study of non-lethal weapons was published Nov. 4, its classification review became a yearlong tug of war between NAS and a Defense Department office, revealing just how difficult and contentious decisions about releasing government information can be following Sept. 11."
• Shuffling at the Top is Set for Intelligence Committees, by Carl Hulse, New York Times, December 2. "A Republican Senator who has been highly critical of the Congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks is in line to lead the Senate Intelligence Committee."

Older News: November 2002

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