President Bush, yesterday (6/18), submitted to Congress his proposal for the creation of a new Homeland Security Department. The detailed 35-page bill would transfer about 100 federal entities into a single cabinet agency with an annual budget of more than $ 37 billion and about 170,000 employees -- reportedly the biggest government reshuffling since 1947. Yet buried within this bill (in Section 204) is a single sentence that could create the largest single loophole in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), our safety net for right-to-know: “Information provided voluntarily by non-Federal entities or individuals that relates to infrastructure vulnerabilities or other vulnerabilities to terrorism and is or has been in the possession of the Department shall not be subject to section 552 of title 5, United States Code [the Freedom of Information Act].” This broad and vague exemption raises a number of important questions. Exactly what types of information would be withheld? What qualifies as “infrastructure” or “vulnerabilities”? What counts as “voluntarily provided”? Is voluntarily-submitted information that “is or has been in the possession of the Department” (a sweeping phrase) exempt from disclosure even if it was obtained by another agency as part of the regulatory process? Without these answers, this exemption could create a black hole into which companies dump information, and avoid public scrutiny. Unfortunately this is not the first time we have seen this troubling concept. The Critical Infrastructure Information Act (S. 1456), recently pushed by Sens. Robert Bennett (R-UT) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ), proposes to exempt voluntarily-disclosed “critical infrastructure” information from FOIA -- a concept fiercely opposed by environmentalists, reporters, libraries, and other public interest groups. A recent letter, signed by 45 public interest groups, urged senators to oppose the Bennett/Kyl legislation. Of particular concern, as with the administration’s new proposal, is the bill’s broad scope. In a May 8 hearing on the subject, Sen. Fred Thompson (R-TN) noted that “critical infrastructure” could be just about anything and everything. Meanwhile, in barring government disclosure of this information -- including information that impacts public health and safety -- the bill in effect invites companies to voluntarily disclose potentially embarrassing information, or information that might expose them to liability, thereby avoiding public scrutiny. Unfortunately, this issue has found its way into Bush’s Homeland Security Act, and we’re left to wonder why. Certainly, it has nothing to do with the creation and elevation of a new department. Indeed, as the debate surrounding the Bennett/Kyl bill suggests, such a broad new exemption from FOIA is a highly complex issue deserving of careful consideration and detailed handling. This clearly cannot be done in a single sentence.