Bring forth the whipping boy, he will suffer much for this!
by James on Dec.10, 2009, under News
According to Wired, Reps. Peter T. King (R-New York), Charles Dent (R-Pennsylvania) and Gus M. Bilirakis have requested that the Department of Homeland Security look into the public and poorly redacted TSA’s Aviation Security Manual.
In my reading of their letter, I disagree with Wired’s statement that they are looking to press criminal charges against the sites that have posted the manual but instead that they just want take down notices sent to the sites. I do agree, though, that this Congressional involvement is a bad idea.
They want to make it a crime to post this kind of information in the future. The reason why I find this to be a problem is that this is not some hacked file or a stolen document nor was it classified. It was posted in a way that to any reasonable person would think that it was legitimate.
Such legislation would create a climate of fear among those who provide access to government documents. Criminalizing the reposting (reposting being the key word) of government documents would decrease public access to them. Since you could be arrested for posting documents that were publicly available you would most likely avoid doing so.
of course, what this boils down to is blame. Trying to shift it from the government officials who provided access to these documents to those who then accessed them. While the TSA officials who made posted these officials will probably lose their jobs, no one is talking about sending them to jail.
Related (maybe) posts:
