July 30th, 2002
Editorial
The San Francisco Chronicle
IMAGINE IF YOU had the chance to create a new Cabinet-level federal
agency that employed 170,000 workers and absorbed 22 former agencies. What
an opportunity! You could implement every value you've ever cherished and
create something that matched your greatest ideals.
That is exactly what the Bush administration appears to be doing with
the new Department of Homeland Security. Only its dreams may turn out to
be our nightmares. The president, for example, wants to exempt the new
agency from the Freedom of Information Act and to eliminate all whistle-blower
protections for employees. Fortunately, such efforts to curtail civil liberties
have met fierce resistance from the American Civil Liberties Union, the
Government Accountability Project, the Federation of American Scientists,
as well as dozens of legislators, who want to make the new agency accountable
to the American people.
But the battle continues. Last week, the House not only provided blanket
exemption from all FOIA requests, but also pre-empted all state and local
open-record laws. Such secrecy, proponents argue, is necessary in order
to encourage corporations to volunteer information to the new agency. But
that is a disingenuous argument because FOIA already protects trade secrets.
The real reason, as many House Democrats repeatedly stated, is that the
administration wants to offer its corporate friends immunity from legal
suits.
Let's say a corporation manufactures a widget that is supposed to prevent
a particular kind of terrorist threat. If that widget fails to operate,
no one would be able sue the corporation for negligence. Even more, as
David Sobel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center has testified,
the Department of Homeland Security could not be held accountable if it
fails to make use of the information it receives. "What did DHS know and
when did it know it?" will be a question that goes unanswered.
Wisely, both the House and Senate rejected the administration's efforts
to deny whistle-blower protection to the new department's employees. But
even the status quo is woefully inadequate. Any employee who experiences
retaliation must first go through an arduous administration process before
seeking a trial in one specific Washington court that has, in 74 out of
75 cases, ruled against federal whistle-blowers. In contrast, Congress
just gave corporate whistle-blowers a quick route to a speedy jury trial.
The final details for what Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., has called the
Department of Homeland Secrecy will have to be ironed out in a congressional
conference committee. In the rush to create the department, however, Congress
should not allow the Bush administration to shroud a new federal agency
in secrecy. We must preserve public accountability and civil liberties.
Anything less will make us less free, but not more secure.
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