Alert 4/19/06
Alert 4/19/06
Two items of substantial concern. Please share with your membership and encourage coverage and comment:
BARDA is back. In a new bill: S2564. With a new name: Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of 2006. This time it’s dressed up as an authority, not an agency. But the approach to secrecy is the same – a B(3) statutory exemption from FOIA – as that our working group objected to several months ago. We had suggested any truly sensitive material be classified and unclassified information be dealt with through existing FOIA exemptions.
The bill is again sponsored by Sen. Richard Burr, R-NC, and Majority Leader Bill Frist is again co-sponsor and CQ says the bill is designed to “jump-start” Project Bioshield, which would press for development and stockpiling of vaccines and drugs to protect the nation against biochemical terrorists attacks. So it’s likely to get a big push in the Senate.
The language of the exclusion says the Secretary of HHS “shall withhold from disclosure” specific technical data or scientific information that is created or obtained during the countermeasure and product advanced research” if it would “reveal vulnerabilities of existing medical or public health defenses against biological, chemical, nuclear, or radiological threats.” Those decisions would be reviewed every five years.
That language is still quite broad and the five-year review is an eternity in the bio-science world. The bill is attached.
A Tenth FOIA Exemption. With the Pentagon in control. The Pentagon is floating a proposal to create a tenth exemption from FOIA for unclassified information “relating” to weapons of mass destruction. The Department of Defense wants this slipped into one of the authorization bills, perhaps so its import won’t be fully debated. It should be because it gives the Pentagon sweeping new authority over not just unclassified information at the federal level but also data that is privately held or in state and local records. It’s declarations of sensitive information would override state law and local open records provisions.
Some of the vulnerabilities the Pentagon cites as examples make sense but others are questionable at best, such as maps, designs, and security/emergency response plans. Perhaps recognizing that, it says in its proposal: “This exemption shall be implemented in a manner so as to not unduly restrict the public's current level of access to environmental impact statements, records concerning healthcare activities, or other information essential to inform official decision-making concerning the health and safety of the public.”
When a military organization with no domestic governance authority or responsibility, and no accountability for the domestic consequences, says it will take care not to “unduly restrict” the level of access to local health and safety information, I worry.
Proposal, Insider story and my analysis attached.
Pete Weitzel
