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CNN Saturday Morning News

Interview With Daniel Sieberg

Aired October 27, 2001 - 08:52   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Since September 11, all sorts of information is disappearing from the Internet, and the government says the Web's loss may be your gain. It's the newest version of an old argument: public safety versus the public's right to know.

CNN's Miles O'Brien has more this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Ever since the attacks of September 11, a lot has changed. Really, everything has changed, including the Internet. Here to talk a little bit about this is Dan Sieberg. He's sci-tech editor for CNN.com. Good to have you with us, Dan.

A difficult thing for government agencies to balance, the right, the need to know along with national security, isn't it?

DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN.COM: Exactly. And that's what this story is about, Miles. It's whether to put this information out on the Internet and make it accessible to the public or to remove it. And in a lot of cases, they've taken the information down. They're reviewing it. Some of it may go back up. Some of it may be removed permanently from the Internet.

O'BRIEN: Which would, I suppose, be unfortunate, but given the tenor of the times may be necessary. Let's go take a look at some of the sites and walk through some examples.

SIEBERG: Surely.

O'BRIEN: The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission used to have a lot of information up there, no longer there. Tell us about this.

SIEBERG: Right. This is one of the first sites that took action after September 11. What they have taken down at this point are spatial coordinates for their nuclear plants. They've decided that that information is too sensitive at this point. I believe there are 103 of them across the country. They've taken down the information on where exactly they are.

And this has been done temporarily. They may put up some of this information again later. Like they say on their site, they could be -- they're review it right now to see what could happen in the future. O'BRIEN: All right, that's what I circled right there. So the U.S. NRC, an obvious place where some information might reside, has modified its course of action. The International Nuclear Safety Center, I'm not too familiar with this organization, but a lot of information here typically?

SIEBERG: Yes, and a very similar situation to what we saw with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, information about nuclear plants and reactors. And taken, they've decided that taking that information down would be the prudent step in this new world, as they're putting it.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's talk about, now some of these are not quite as obvious as you might think, for example, the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Now, why would that be an agency that would have a lot of information that, say, a terrorist might be able to use?

SIEBERG: Right. Well, in this case, Miles, what we're talking about is the risk management program that the EPA runs. And these are 15,000 chemical plants across the country that have any number of hazardous chemicals at them. The information was put out there initially to make it available to anyone who was moving into that area, to make it available to emergency responders who would need to know what was in these chemical plants.

They have since taken this information down. I've spoken with the EPA. They are in the process of reviewing it and decided whether to put some of it back up. Of course, you can still get this information if you go into an EPA office or put in a Freedom of Information Act request.

O'BRIEN: Now, there's a category of sites out there, and we use this one very frequently here just in doing our research, the Federation of American Scientists. And this is a group whose whole mission is to get things out in the public. For example, we're looking at basically diagrams of a Tomahawk cruise missile.

SIEBERG: Exactly.

O'BRIEN: Obviously this is a very sensitive area. What have they done?

SIEBERG: Well, they've had to really grapple with this, Miles. As you know, they've been in the habit of making the government more open, putting things on the Internet that are more available to the public and opening up freedom of information.

In this case, they really had to struggle with what information to take down. They decided to take down information that was unique to their site. So, for example, they had diagrams of federal buildings, the location of them. They felt that that information was too sensitive and couldn't be found elsewhere on the Internet and therefore they decided to take it down from their site, at least for now, and possibly permanently. O'BRIEN: All right, well, we are just about out of time, unfortunately. I wanted to direct your Web site as I leaf through CNN.com, to our sci-tech section, where there's an interesting article which talks about this very subject. The headline, "Feds Remove Information From Web Sites." Your Web surfing is not going to be as fruitful as it was, but given what's going on in the world, perhaps that's the way it should be.

SIEBERG: Right. And some of the freedom of information advocates are saying they would just like to see some notices on these sites, like with the NRC, where they tell people what's been taken down and maybe they'll reconsider putting it back up in the future.

O'BRIEN: Dan Sieberg of CNN.com, thanks very much. We appreciate it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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