The Department of Justice (DOJ) released a memo explaining the impacts of a new Critical Infrastructure Information (CII) rule on the implementation of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) throughout the federal government. The rule DOJ refers to was an interim final rule published by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which restricts public disclosure and government action on voluntarily submitted information about infrastructure vulnerabilities and problems. The memo informs FOIA officers in all federal agencies that the CII program establishes a new exemption category under FOIA for withholding the information. The memo also explains that the exemption only applies to information held by DHS since the interim final rule restricted the program to information submitted directly to DHS. The memo does note that the program may expand beyond direct submissions and that “such a development could be expected to have an impact upon the daily processes of FOIA administration at many agencies.” The memo also discusses the CII provisions that prevent industry submitters from hiding important safety information inside the security program. The Justice Department notes that when agencies independently obtain information that falls within the definition of CII as part of their everyday regulatory processes, the restrictions of the CII program do not apply. The memo also states that if a company were to submit information to DHS under the CII program that was identical to information required by another agency, the protection of the DHS submission would in no way extend to the other submission. The department asserts, “that any information can be submitted to multiple federal agencies on entirely different tracks.” Interestingly, the FOIA memo also briefly addresses another information policy being developed by DHS – Sensitive Homeland Security Information (SHSI). The memo noted that in a Feb. 20 DHS report to Congress on CII, the agency also discussed the ongoing development of a SHSI policy and procedures for handling the information. The Justice memo claims that the unfinalized policy “will not directly impact the government wide administration of the FOIA.” Justice asserts that the policy “will involve no additional authority for protecting information from public disclosure,” even though “it certainly holds the potential of significantly altering the landscape for the safeguarding of federal information.” Regardless of Justice’s predictions within the FOIA memo, only the implementation of the CII and SHSI programs will reveal the impacts of these policies on the public’s right-to-know.