(U-WIRE) COLLEGE PARK, Md. — National security measures have extended to the fourth floor of University of Maryland’s McKeldin Library. In response to fears of providing information that could be used to orchestrate a biological or chemical attack, the university’s library, along with 335 other federal depository libraries, was asked to destroy a CD-ROM about the nation’s water supply.
In October the U.S. Geological Survey — the agency that supplied the information on the CD-ROM — asked the Government Printing Office — the agency that distributed the CD-ROM — to order all libraries with the CD-ROM in their collections to destroy it.
“There are a thousand legitimate uses for that data. We just don’t want to offer it up on a silver platter,” said Butch Kinerney, a spokesman for the USGS.
Since then, the CD-ROM from the Government Documents & Maps collection in McKeldin has been destroyed.
Kinerney said the CD-ROM gave the latitude and longitude of pipes used to obtain the nation’s water.
“It provided a roadmap for someone who had criminal intentions to poison our water,” he said.
Others, however, said restricting public information is just as dangerous.
Stuart McPhail, a sophomore business and philosophy major and co-president of the campus chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the public should have access to information, even if there is a chance the information could end up in the hands of someone who could misuse it.
“I understand that they’re trying to do things out of security, but it’s important to see that it does so in violation of freedom of information,” he said.
University of Arizona librarian Karen Williams, who had to destroy the data there, is not comfortable with taking information away from the public.
“If it happens again, we would consult legal counsel here at the university to make absolutely certain we are required to destroy the materials. Unfortunately, it looks like this may be the case,” she said in an e-mail. “The federal depository library system sets the rules that libraries have to live by.”
In a statement, the University of Maryland Library System said it would comply with future requests to destroy data because contents of federal depository libraries are considered federal property.
Although the CD-ROM is no longer available in libraries, Kinerney said if individuals can prove to the USGS they have a legitimate need for it, the information will be provided to them.
He said the USGS hopes to reissue the document, titled “Source Area Characteristics of Large Public Surface-Water Supplies in the Conterminous United States.”
In addition to the CD-ROM, information from websites of the Department of Energy, the USGS, the International Nuclear Safety Center, the Environmental Protection Agency and other organizations has been pulled.
The release of information has been monitored more closely since Sept. 11. Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a memorandum Oct. 12 urging federal agencies to be careful about what they released under the Freedom of Information Act.
Maryland Democratic Gov. Parris N. Glendening is working on a bill that could restrict access to public records.
