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Homeland Security Okays Closed Proceedings
CNet is reporting that a newly created branch within the Homeland Security Department that brings together many different federal agency employees and private sector players has been given the go-ahead to disregard a law requiring meetings to be open and proceedings public. From the article: "The 1972 law generally requires such groups to meet in open sessions, make written meeting materials publicly available, and deliver a 15-day notice of any decision to close a meeting to the public. The last is a particular point of concern for Homeland Security officials, who anticipate that private emergency meetings may need to be scheduled on short notice."
As near as I can tell, this means that somewhere there is a guy named "Homeland Security Okay", and these Closed Proceedings belong to him.
But speaking seriously:
The 1972 law generally requires such groups to meet in open sessions, make written meeting materials publicly available, and deliver a 15-day notice of any decision to close a meeting to the public. The last is a particular point of concern for Homeland Security officials, who anticipate that private emergency meetings may need to be scheduled on short notice.
The private sector, fearing that sensitive data will get to the wrong hands, has continued to resist sharing important information with the feds, the Department of Homeland Security said, citing government auditors' findings from late 2003.
Making the meetings public would amount to "giving our nation's enemies information they could use to most effectively attack a particular infrastructure and cause cascading consequences across multiple infrastructures," another departmental advisory council warned in August.
Is this not a valid reason for a group charged with advising on issues dealing with critical public infrastructure?
Also, please note that ANY meetings under FACA can already be closed, but a 15-day notice must be given of such closure. The end result, since 1972, is still that the meeting is closed.
The issue here is that the Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council may decide it needs to have an emergency meeting, AND that it should be closed, but can't wait 15 days to hold the meeting. The waiting period would seem designed to discourage federal agencies from routinely closing meetings without an announcement period that presumably may allow for recourse, official or otherwise, if such a closure is improper. However, the importance of a critical infrastructure advisory board holding an emergency meeting trumps the waiting period. Remember: being able to hold a closed meeting is NOT new; the only new element is not having to give a 15-day public notice that such a meeting will be closed.
I'd encourage everyone to actually read the article. Of course, if you think nothing should ever be secret and think this is part of another conservative/Republican plot, then you probably won't agree with any reasoning for keeping such critical meetings secret, and/or not having to wait 15 days to hold such meetings.
Because security through obscurity is a time-proven strategy. It works for everyone that's tried it, doesn't it?
The current administration seems to make just about everything it can closed to public scrutiny; in this case, it's even easier than usual because they can claim "it's against terrorists / fer the children!!!"
Sigh...
We live, as we dream -- alone....
Under FACA, such federal advisory meetings can already be closed, and have been able to be closed for over three decades. However, a 15-day public notice must be given for such a closure.
The net result, however, is that the meeting is still closed.
This change allows for the Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council to have closed meetings in an emergency without giving a 15-day notice that it is going to have a closed meeting.
I think that critical public infrastructure protection outweighs any need for a 15-day notice of a closed meeting.
I find it highly suspicious that someone who seems to know a lot about these types of meetings (I wonder why that is) is posting on Slashdot. Especially with a favorable view. Regardless of whether or not you are right in what you say, it seems to me that you have more of a political motivation for posting here. The kind of mind that takes a keen interest in government and politics and the kind of mind that has a strong interest in computers and technology typically do not mix. This is one of THE biggest problems with the net. We have people who are either "wannabe" career politicians or are virtual lobbyists astroturfing the view of their employers. You are one part of the formula that is trying to subvert people to the cause of the current criminal in charge of the Whitehouse. Unless you have some other defense for yourself (I'm not even touching why you might be posting AC) I recommend that people read what you wrote with a large degree of suspicion.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
In case there's any doubt regarding my position :
I fear the government of the US far more than I fear any terrorist.
Why ?
Because the US government has wasted far more American lives than any terrorist has.
That might be true of 15 year olds living with Mom, but some of us are adults that do care how a country a governed.
I am left to wonder what significant safegaurds we have remaining. Admittedly, I knew nothing of this particular 1972 law to begin with. But now I wonder if there are any more significant laws that are in place to preserve the transparency of the US government that will likely be targetted or otherwise disregarded?
This "war on terror" is such an incredibly dangerous witchunt. It struck my mind really hard the other day when I first heard it said that "terrorism is a method, not an identity." Nothing and no law could possibly prevent any free people from being stripped of their creativity when it comes to fighting for what they think is important. To attempt to target a "methodology" is like shooting at ghosts. Instead, they have to target people believed to be capable of using a methodology. It's just an inch or two away from "crimes of thought."
There are other nations that have been dealing with "terrorist activity" in the past and their reaction has been nothing so drastic as what is happening in the US. They treat the activity as they would any crime. This is exactly how the US should be responding. There must be a way to fight crime without taking civil liberties and government transparency further from the public's eye.
The next round of elections will not come soon enough for me. I still have hopes that the damage can be reversed.
Except that meetings of such advisory committees have already been able to be closed to the public for 34 years (and could also be closed to the public with NO notice before that).
FACA stipulated a reasonable notice to the public when a meeting was to be closed, so as to advise the public where additional information may be obtained, or information about when the results of such a meeting may become public, or when future public meetings may occur.
That was in 1972.
The meetings were still closed.
In 2006, there is no reason to give 15 days notice of a closed meeting of a federal advisory board. Ample information can be broadly provided to meet the statue, which specifically states:
(a)(1) Each advisory committee meeting shall be open to the public.
(2) Except when the President determines otherwise for reasons of national security, timely
notice of each such meeting shall be published in the Federal Register, and the Adminis-
trator shall prescribe regulations to provide for other types of public notice to insure that all
interested persons are notified of such meeting prior thereto.
(3) Interested persons shall be permitted to attend, appear before, or file statements with
any advisory committee, subject to such reasonable rules or regulations as the Administra-
tor may prescribe.
Public notice of a closed meeting can reasonably happen a lot more quickly in 2006 than it could in 1972. Remember, the meeting is still closed.
So, your quote isn't very relevant. At all.
If this helps prevent another 911 (which, admittedly, there is a potential it may not), then maybe it isn't such a bad thing.
There were compelling reasons for secrecy even back in the day the Constituion was originally drafted, yet the framers thought it more important for the government not to operate in secret.
We didn't have the mis-named Patriot Act before 9-11 and the FBI and CIA had ample warning about the 9-11 hijackers. We KNEW about some of them going to flight school and didn't act on it. We had ample intelligence before 9-11 and law enforcement had enough power to pick them up if anyone had bothered to act on the FBI field report about potential terrorists in flight school. So why is it the government needs all these additional secret powers and wire tip authority now?
The real compelling reason for Republicans to want secrecy is because they've all but thrown accountability out the window. When there's no accountability, then you damn sure don't want transparency.
And do not give me any of that bullshit about the Democrats not being any better. All this is happening with a Republican House, Senate and White House and it's been that way since 2000 and you've had Congress since 1994. It's time to admit that if this country is in a bucket of shit it's because of the REPUBLICANS! Not the Democrats, not the liberals...the problem is YOU.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Sounds okay to me. Maybe I'll just stop paying my taxes, too. I won't pay for a CD I can't listen to, or a book I can't read, so why pay for a government that won't let me see what it's doing?
If it's none of my business, maybe I shouldn't be paying for it.
Maybe not
If you honestly beleive that tech-heads don't understand or research politics, then you need to broaden your scope. Come out of the box, man, there's a whole world out here.
It's a fallacy to think that there is anything which the current administration cannot get away with, law or no law. The outrage is already to the threshold where people are talking in terms of "impeaching the President", which is the ultimate consequence short of a violent coup... And it is not going to happen.
So what do people imagine the current administration cannot do? Obviously there are outrageous things they could do which might affect the loyalty of the military system that keeps them in power, or that could sever the ties to the financial supporters, but they aren't going to do anything of that nature.
The people aren't going to act, at least not in significant numbers, and certainly not with real hostility. Congress isn't going to destroy this government, not even if the House turns over to the opposition party next January. And other countries aren't going to band together to wage war against the US, not to liberate Iraq from the US, and absolutely not in response to US *domestic* policy.
So tell me again, what is it that stops the executive administration from operating precisely as a term-limited dictatorship?
The real fun starts when this administration hands over all this newly asserted power to the next one -- equally likely to be a liberal democrat or a moderate republican. Either way, somebody new gets all this amazing unprecedented power that nobody ever seems to have discovered before Bush.
If Bush has a legacy, that's it: The President of the United States, formerly believed to be under severe constraints, actually has unlimited power as long as he can protect himself from assassinations and as long as he has a strongly aligned partisan majority in both houses of congress. Even when most of the people in the country are vehemently (but not violently) opposed to his government, and even when there is a widespread belief that he should be removed from office, it has no meaning at all, and certainly is no contraint on the president's actions, either in making domestic policy, or in waging wars of aggression.
Even if the money to fight these wars is borrowed from five generations in the future, he gets away with it. Lives another day. Isn't removed from power. Has a military that continues to follow orders from the chain of command, as opposed to turning against it. Faces no military or economic opposition from any other nation. That sort of thing. Get it?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Widdling
Whittling
While your statement may be true, I don't think it comes out the way you intended it. And if you did intend it that way, you're a sick little puppy.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Making the meetings public would amount to "giving our nation's enemies information they could use to most effectively attack a particular infrastructure and cause cascading consequences across multiple infrastructures," another departmental advisory council warned in August.
As I recall, in 1972, we were in the midst of fighting a Cold War that had, as a very real possible consequence, the end of life on Earth as we know it. We were fighting against a highly organized and well-funded enemy that had thousands of spies at all levels of government and industry, sleeper agents ready to be called on when necessary, and military capabilities that made us legitimately doubt whether we would prevail in any conventional armed conflict. An attack from their formidable stockpiles of intercontinental ballistic missiles would give us less than an hour to pray to the God of our choice before the sun vanished and our component molecules were suddenly and violently redistributed into the ash that would, hopefully, someday support life again.
And yet, even with this Sword of Damocles hanging over our very survival, we had the conscience and foresight to realize that while we cannot control the behavior of those who would be our enemies, we can control ourselves, and refuse to sacrifice the ideals we believe more important than life in the vain hopes that by abdicating oversight of our government we will somehow gain immunity from outside aggressors.
I find it the greatest irony of all that those in power right now, who present themselves so vaingloriously, act with such great cowardice. Their willingness to preemptively sacrifice the ideals we hold dear is an insult to the oaths they took, and the people who trust them with their lives.
No bomb is capable of destroying the historical significance of the Constitution, the concept of modern representative democracy, religious freedom, free speech, or the notion that man has the right and responsibility to govern himself by reason. Yet we find ourselves in the peculiar position of surrendering these, our most valuable possessions, in the vain hope that they will purchase us safety, when we know with certainty that such safety is a chimera, that our lives will always be in danger so long as we espouse such dangerous ideas.
It does not take courage to hide in a shelter, to stifle dissent or cut yourself off from contrary opinions. It does not take courage to meet in secret, to persecute those who are different, to deny the humanity of those who oppose you.
What takes courage is knowing there are people in this world who hate you so much they will kill you, and to still get up in the morning and walk out the front door, refusing to change your life or your beliefs due to fear. We knew this after September 11th, we were even told this at the time by our leaders, but for some reason both they and we have lost sight of such a simple insight.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
What I'm worried about is it being so easy to close a meeting that it becomes routine.
Right now we have one safeguard: It's a pain in the ass to wait 15 days so people would mostly rather keep meetings open than close them. Unless absolutely necessary.
And I understand the probable necessity of having a closed meeting on short notice.
Where I have a real issue is the way that DHS has decided to work around this conflict. You can't just up and decide that the law doesn't apply to you. You can't decide to just break the law if it doesn't suit you. If the circumstances under which the law was created have changed, maybe it's time to change the law. Go to Congress, tell them how the law hasn't kept pace with reality and ask for changes. Better yet, suggest some.
Here's my suggestion: keep the 15 days notice the way it has been. However, in the case that the meeting has to be held much sooner than that and be closed, you have to do more than just give notice. You may have to have a counterpart in a different branch of government review an "emergency closure request" or somesuch and OK it. Maybe add a sunset provision in there where after a certain amount of time there will be a review (with a comment period) to decide wether or not the meeting stuff should remain closed. If the review isn't held, the stuff is automatically opened.
See, it isn't that complicated. DHS gets what they need to do their job. There is a check against the power from another branch and we have a mechanism to regain transparency after the fact.
But did DHS even ask Congress or entertain the notion? I don't have the answer to that. What I do know is that the President, DHS, the whole danged government and the general populace don't get to decide which laws do and do not apply to them. They can't selectively choose to obey this law and disobey that law. No matter what the percieved necessity may be.
And this has been happenning at an increasing pace in our executive branch as of late. It's criminal, anAmerican and unacceptable.
Sheesh, DHS... all you have to do is ask. We'll listen. But if you give up on the rule of law... you'll lead us down a path to anarchy or totalitarianism. And you know what... that's a bigger threat to America than Al Qaeda could ever hope to be. Don't do their work for them.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
> I recommend that people read what you wrote with a large degree of suspicion.
I recommend that people read all slashdot comments with a large degree of suspicion. In fact, I recommend that people read everything with a large degree of suspicion.
My other car is first.
(a)(1) Each advisory committee meeting shall be open to the public. (2) Except when the President determines otherwise for reasons of national security, timely notice of each such meeting shall be published in the Federal Register, and the Administrator shall prescribe regulations to provide for other types of public notice to insure that all interested persons are notified of such meeting prior thereto. (3) Interested persons shall be permitted to attend, appear before, or file statements with any advisory committee, subject to such reasonable rules or regulations as the Administrator may prescribe. (b) Subject to section 552 of title 5, United States Code, the records, reports, transcripts, minutes, appendixes, working papers, drafts, studies, agenda, or other documents which were made available to or prepared for or by each advisory committee shall be available for public inspection and copying at a single location in the offices of the advisory committee or the agency to which the advisory committee reports until the advisory committee ceases to exist. (c) Detailed minutes of each meeting of each advisory committee shall be kept and shall contain a record of the persons present, a complete and accurate description of matters discussed and conclusions reached, and copies of all reports received, issued, or approved by the advisory committee. The accuracy of all minutes shall be certified to by the chairman of the advisory committee. (d) Subsections (a)(1) and (a)(3) of this section shall not apply to any portion of an advisory committee meeting where the President, or the head of the agency to which the advisory committee reports, determines that such portion of such meeting may be closed to the public in accordance with subsection (c) of section 552b of title 5, United States Code. Any such determination shall be in writing and shall contain the reasons for such determination. If such a determination is made, the advisory committee shall issue a report at least annually setting forth a summary of its activities and such related matters as would be informative to the public consistent with the policy of section 552(b) of title 5, United States Code.
No question: Chertoff's actions are entirely within the scope of the law.
NOW: is all this secrecy a good thing? I doubt it. But anyone who really cares about this ought to do something: join the NSA, put your uber-coding skillz to good use, and find bin Laden.
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
Your points are worth debating - they're debatable. But who are you? You anonymously post a long, formatted screed, in the first post, including a link to the law. Replying in the first post to an article published by ScuttleMonkey, but without the usual submitter's credit introducing the story.
Who are you, and where do you get off assuring us that anything isn't part of another "conservative/Republican plot", when our lives are so full of them already, and they always come with the same kind of denial? Like your comment that if we're suspicious of the government, then we probably won't agree with you, whoever you are.
This country is founded on distrusting the government, for exactly the reasons we produced the 1972 law, which made them rare exceptions, not the standard procedure.
Removing-accountability-is-always-fun dept indeed.
--
make install -not war
ROTFLMAO! What a crock! Just because somebody's interested in computers and tech doesn't mean they're not interested in politics and vice versa. Just to show you how possible it is, take a look at Jerry Pournelle, a major computer columnist (and SF author) with a PhD in Poly Sci, and another one in Psyc, both earned. He's not the only one, either. I'm quite interested in politics and I've been earning my living from computers, off and on, for over thirty years.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
I live in a state in Australia which was governed by an incompetants engaged in criminal activity who imposed draconian laws to limit public scrutiny. Infighting in the cabinet resulted in the leader being isolated from his own party, and only then did events unfold which resulted in the jailing of the police commisionioner and several government ministers. The situation had continued for years most likely due to limited public scrutiny and various pressures applied to those who spoke out agaist blatantly obvious criminal activity in a Westminster style democracy.
Elements of the police force were unaccountable (ie. no search warrant required and no requirement to identify themselves) under a piece of law called the "drugs misuse act" which bore some similarity to a watered down patriot act. An anonymous tip off was considered enough for a search by unidentified plain clothes police and the people subject to the search were not permitted to contact others on pain of prosecution - my neighbours house was searched in this way and she was very upset afterwards when she was permitted to leave. It didn't happen much due to incompetance by the corrupt portion of the police force and a reluctance to use these methods by the portion that was less politicised - so it would have gotten worse if it wasn't in the dying days of an imploding corrupt government. Australia differs from the current situation in the USA in that people cannot be detained without charge - but "resisting arrest" was the sole charge in many cases and was considered sufficient.
Now with secret homeland security groups that avoid the traditional chain of command you don't even need a corrupt government for things to get bad. People get up to all kinds of mischief when there is much profit to be made and they can be sure that no-one is watching. Examples should be taken from other uncontrolled US agencies far from home before giving the home gaurd secret police a chance to play at being bad guys out of James Bond on your home soil. What's wrong with the FBI, the military and state law enforcement that you have to have huge numbers of unaccountable secret police without the training to be car park attendants running around and doing stupid things like making an airline turn a plane around to teach Cat Stevens a lesson for becomming a Moslem?
...but it is true now more than ever.
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
It's not 1984 yet, but it's looking more and more like November of 1983. Scarry stuff.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
HAY!!!
Some of us, even when we were 15 cared more about what the government was doing than the majority of adults, certanly here in the UK!
I spend a lot of time trying to get people go give a f*** about what the government are doing, or to rty and do something about it, and they just don't care.
I took my mum to and underground bookshop place yesterday, and she thought it was too "contravertial" for her, even though thease are the exact people fighting for HER rights.
and adults say we don't understand
___________________________________________
PLEASE comment out swearing, it stops some of us seeing good articals at work when our home proxy is down lol
First of all the Homeland Security Department was set up how long ago. They are NOW just getting around to this securing the infrastructure issue. They plan to meet about 4 times a year but 15 days notice is too much time for an emergency. Are we to believe our government and businesses are suddenly in response mode and will make a major infrastructure change in less than 2 weeks. The dept took 2 years to just set up these meetings. The airports, ports and chemical/power plants are still not secure but they need secret meetings to discuss the issue. Well I guess 60 Minutes and the like are unpatriotic, they have done shows about the ports, chemical/power and nuclear being unsecured months ago.
...". Their justification is always the terrorists will hear or read it and then they will attack. These secret meetings are always necessary to protect us, even though nothing is actually being done. I could go along with this if I actually saw that the government was responsive to issues. But the containers are still not being checked and the chemical plants have open gates. I FEEL SECURE. So the secrecy is bullshit.
What I really don't like is "such and such cannot be disclosed because
Homeland Security and FEMA could not respond to Katrina with warning but now all of a sudden we are to believe their emergency meetings will be more than an exercise in beauracracy.
Lastly is does stink of coverup when businesses get to meet with government outside of the public's view. There is a bigger chance the dept will be setting up "protection from liability" for companies than it will be setting up actual protection from attack at these meetings.
In theory there is no situation or issue the government could not use the red herring or secrecy for security. We need to hold people accountable and not just keep writing blank checks and given open license hoping someone will fall onto the right decision. That is the only way we can really be secure. It should be obvious their first defense of a choice is alway to play on your fear.
Euphemism, what is that a euphemism for something.