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Administration supports House passage of H.R. 4598. The Administration
is pleased that the House is taking action to develop systems and
procedures for Federal agencies to share homeland security information
about domestic threats and vulnerabilities with State and local officials
who need the information to prevent and prepare for terrorist attacks.
The Administration supports the bill's goals to improve our ability
to protect sensitive homeland security information and to facilitate
the appropriate exchange of such information among Federal, State,
and local governments.
Since September 11th, State and local officials have expressed the
need for better access to actionable information that can prevent
terrorist attacks on our homeland. Some of this information must
be classified, but most will be sensitive but unclassified. This
legislation seeks to balance and reconcile the needs of State and
local personnel to have access to timely and relevant homeland security
information to combat terrorism with the need to protect and safeguard
both classified and sensitive but unclassified information. The
bill calls for the establishment of procedures for the declassification,
or passage in another appropriate unclassified form, of relevant
homeland security information that State and local personnel need
to prevent and prepare for terrorist attacks, as well as procedures
for identifying and safeguarding sensitive but unclassified information
related to homeland security. These steps will provide State and
local entities, especially law enforcement and other first responders,
with relevant information derived from sensitive intelligence information
without vastly increasing the number of security clearances. Security
clearances need to be to granted to State and local officials in
a coordinated fashion so that classified information can be shared
with officials outside the Federal government when necessary and
appropriate.
While
the Administration supports the bill's goals, the definition of
"homeland security information" needs to exclude individually-identifiable
information that has been collected solely for statistical purposes
under a pledge of confidentiality. Unless we preserve the trust
and cooperation of respondents to Federal statistical surveys, there
will be a significant deterioration in the ability of the Federal
statistical system to provide high quality aggregate data to guide
critical economic and social policy decisions. The Administration
looks forward to working with Congress on this issue as the bill
moves through the legislative process.
The
Administration is concerned that certain language in Section 8 of
the bill may have the unintended consequence of limiting the government's
flexibility, as provided by the USA PATRIOT Act, to share terrorist
threat or other critical national security information with foreign
and United States intelligence and national security officials.
Specifically, the Administration recommends that section 8(a)(1)
of the bill be deleted. To the extent that the intent of the provision
is to ensure that Section 203(d)(1) of the USA PATRIOT Act does
not conflict with other provisions of H.R. 4598 itself, we believe
the language should be narrowly tailored to achieve that result.
As is, the Administration fears that this provision -- striking
the "Notwithstanding" clause entirely -- would inadvertently sweep
too broadly, create confusion concerning the interaction of the
USA PATRIOT Act with other laws, and alter the balance struck in
the USA PATRIOT Act between the imperative of protecting the United
States and its people from terrorist and other threats and concerns
about information sharing expressed in other laws. In addition,
the Administration suggests that Section 8(a)(2) be modified to
ensure that it does not in any way diminish the authorities already
in the USA PATRIOT Act to share information with Federal law enforcement,
intelligence, protective, immigration, national defense and national
security officials and that it is consistent with the authorities
of the Director of Central Intelligence and the Attorney General
to protect intelligence sources and methods and sensitive law enforcement
information.
In
addition, the Administration would like to work with the Congress
to address possible refinements to several other provisions in sections
6 through 8, including refinements to the provisions concerning
what information is covered and which government officials may share
it.
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