Public not allowed to view or read "secret laws" governing air transportation security procedures

• Last month, Helen Chenoweth-Hage attempted to board a United Airlines flight from Boise to Reno when she was pulled aside by airline personnel for additional screening, including a pat-down search for weapons or unauthorized materials.
• "She said she wanted to see the regulation that required the additional procedure for secondary screening and she was told that she couldn't see it," local TSA security director Julian Gonzales told the Idaho Statesman (10/10/04).
• It is part of a continuing transformation of American government that is leaving it less open, less accountable and less susceptible to rational deliberation as a vehicle for change.
• A new report from the Congressional Research Service describes with welcome clarity how, by altering a few words in the Homeland Security Act, Congress "significantly broadened" the government's authority to generate "sensitive security information," including an entire system of "security directives" that are beyond public scrutiny, like the one former Rep. Chenoweth-Hage sought to examine.
• Efforts by the Transportation Security Administration to investigate air marshals for talking to the press or the public "were appropriate under the circumstances," the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General said last week, and did not constitute a "witch hunt."
• However, "air marshals from two locations said that they were threatened with arrest and prosecution if they were found to have released sensitive security information (SSI), even though release of SSI is not a prosecutable offense," the Inspector General said.
• In a related overstatement, Federal Air Marshal Service policy says that "employees who release classified information or records in any form without authority from the Classified Documents Custodian are in violation of United States Code and are subject to arrest and prosecution," the DHS Inspector General (IG) noted.
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