[Business Daily] "Treasury opens lid on secrecy in military purchase contracts" Written by Steve Mbogo 05-July-2007: The Kenya military machine will undergo a radical shake-up that will see the the veil of secrecy lifted on its multi-million shilling procurement deals, that have sometimes been labelled as classified. Officials at the Treasury told the Business Daily that discussions are going on with the military to work out how the latter can increase its level of accountability in its defence procurement to the public. In the more strategic procurement that could legitimately be classified as official secrets, the Treasury seems to favour a plan where a Parliamentary committee would have an oversight role without compromising national security. For many years the Kenya military, the Police and the intelligence services have been bogged down by single-sourced secret purchases that have often turned into shaddy deals between politicians, high ranking government officials and briefcase contractors.... ...Mr Mwaimu Mati, the head of Mars Group Kenya, said security related procurement should not be left to the absolute discretion of the military or the Executive. “We have elected MPs who can be trusted with the responsibility of scrutinizing security procurement and budgets. This conforms to our Constitution which requires that the security forces be subject to civilian control,” said Mati. It is unlikely that exposing procurement of security items to public scrutiny will compromise national security, in view of the massive information brought to the public domain by the internet. http://www.bdafrica.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1794&Itemid=5813 --------- [WIRED] Bittersweet Sunshine: Four Decades of FOIA Wins and Losses Ryan Singel, 04 July 2007 U.S. government documents used to be considered secret unless individual agencies decided to release them. But on July 4, 1966, that presumption was inverted when the Freedom of Information Act was signed into law, declaring that in a government of, by and for the people, government records must be released to the public upon request, unless those records meet a handful of defined exemptions. Over the last four decades, FOIA (pronounced "foy-ya") has become one of the most important laws creating openness and transparency in government. It's a key tool for journalists and nonprofit groups investigating the workings of the federal government. It has been used to reveal the FBI's Vietnam-era surveillance of American dissidents, CIA drug experiments on American citizens, and government inspectors turning a blind eye to the sale of contaminated meat, among many other things. But as a just-released report from the National Security Archive showed, bureaucracies still resist the law's openness imperative. They will ignore requests, take decades to process them or redact embarrassing information. A bill that would penalize agencies for foot-dragging was set to be voted on earlier this year by the full Senate, but was stalled by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Arizona), who put a secret hold on the bill. There will be no progress until he removes the hold. Despite these obstacles, persistent reporters and public-interest organizations have been able to crack the veil of secrecy that bureaucrats and politicians use to hide their motivations and machinations. In honor of the law's 41st birthday, Wired News presents five of the best technology-focused FOIA wins and five that are still outstanding. Top Five Technology and Civil Liberties Sunshine Requests [1.] Carnivore Documents: In the 1990s, the FBI developed software, dubbed Carnivore, that was installed at internet service providers[ISPs] to track what targeted individuals did online. Though the FBI claimed Carnivore was not an untargeted dragnet, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC, pried documents loose from the FBI showing the software was capable of capturing all traffic across a server, and that the software was not as accurate in practice as the FBI claimed. Little is known about successors to Carnivore, but ISPs have been configuring their networks to make them surveillance-friendly. [2.]Airline Data Dumps and No-Fly Lists: EPIC filed a file cabinet full of sunshine requests to learn more about terrorist watch lists and post-9/11 airline data dumps to the government. Highlights included proof that Northwest Airlines turned over data to the government despite public statements to the contrary. Also revealed were no-fly-list mismatches, including a long-running screwup that snagged one of the nation's most high-profile nuns, who was only cleared for flying after her boss called presidential adviser Karl Rove. [3.]Mercury Contamination in Fish: Successive sunshine requests by environmental activists revealed that certain fish, including popular canned albacore tuna, contained higher levels of mercury than the government had previously acknowledged. While canned tuna was never put on the list of fish that pregnant women should avoid, the data has proved important in an ongoing debate about the risks of eating seafood. [4.] Domestic Military Spy Databases: The American Civil Liberties Union successfully uncovered a Department of Defense database, dubbed Talon, that was supposed to include reports on terrorist threats to military bases in the United States. Instead, the secret database soon became filled with reports on legitimate antiwar protesters whose activities were protected under the First Amendment. The program was shuttered following the ensuing publicity, but the full extent of the spying is unknown since the Pentagon deleted many of the records before an audit was complete. [5.] Encryption Wars: Though it may seem like ancient history to some, civil liberties groups spent much of the 1990s fighting the government over encryption, which had previously been used almost exclusively by secret government agencies and the military. The government claimed that any public use of encryption, including such now-commonplace standards used to secure online purchases and banking, needed to have a backdoor for law enforcement. FOIA requests revealed that the government knew its proposals were flawed. It also showed the government intended to use requirements that digital telephone switches must be wiretap-friendly as a way to force encryption products to have backdoors. The government eventually lost "the war," and encryption now helps lock down internet e-mail, online purchases and commercial DVDs, though few use encrypted e-mail. Five Unanswered Technology and Civil Liberties FOIA Requests [1.] Warrantless Wiretapping Documents: A wide array of media and activist groups are attempting to get information on the government's warrant-free spying on Americans' phone and e-mail communications. So far, none have succeeded, though a Senate committee has just subpoenaed the Bush administration for some of the sought-after documents. [2.] Automated Targeting System: For years, the Department of Homeland Security has been assigning threat levels to individual foreigners and citizens alike as they enter and leave the country. However, little is known about the algorithms or data used. So far, Homeland Security has failed to release documents in response to open-government requests. [3.] Total Information Awareness Program: Nearly four years ago, Wired News filed a request for documents about the testing and privacy protections of a program intended to sift through a massive database of Americans' private lives in order to find terrorists. Instead of filling the request, Darpa, the Pentagon's advanced research arm, looked into this reporter's prior stories and questioned his motives. [4.] Patriot Act Abuse Documents and Telecom Contracts: In March, an internal Justice Department report found the FBI had massively misused a key Patriot Act power that allows investigators to get financial and communication records on anyone relevant to an investigation without getting a judge's approval. The FBI also inked secret contracts with three large telecommunications companies to speed up the process. A judge recently ruled that the agency will begin releasing 2,500 pages a month starting July 5 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. [5.] FBI's Investigative Data Warehouse: Post-9/11, the FBI created a massive search engine that indexes a bunch of different bureau databases, including investigative files and phone records obtained through the above Patriot Act abuse. Little is known of the technology, which a representative compared to Google's, or the scope of the databases searched. Wired News and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have each filed sunshine requests. http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/07/sunshinelawat40 -- ____________________________________________________________________________________ Need Mail bonding? Go to the Yahoo! Mail Q&A for great tips from Yahoo! Answers users. http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396546091