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that the availability of information should not be comprised solely
because terrorists might use the information. Their argument was that
the safety of chemical facilities should be improved instead. Indus-
tries and parts of the state, on the other hand, argued that disclosure
of information could be to the benefit of terrorists and should there-
fore be limited. No doubt this homeland security argument also was
strategically used by industry in their constant struggle to limit environ-
mental information disclosures. And it appeared that during the first
years after 9/11 the media, especially in the United States, lost much of
their critical attitude towards the government and governmental infor-
mation systems, lowering media pressure for disclosure and accepting
limitations on freedom of information.
In U.S. environmental politics, such struggles always have a strong
legal component. Attempts to build a coherent legal framework that
would make chemical industries less vulnerable for terrorist attacks -
such as the proposed Corzine Bill - were dismissed as being 'stalin-
esque' and a 'jihad against chemical companies'. 25 The only two laws
that were actually implemented to improve the safety of chemical facil-
ities - the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and
Response Act and the Maritime Transportation Security Act - cover
only a fraction of the hazardous chemical facilities in the United States.
Various researchers studied the potential usability of the disclosed
information for terrorists' purposes. In a research sponsored by the
National Defense Research Institute, Baker et al. ( 2004 ) applied a
supply-demand approach to information. In assessing whether or not
terrorists would be able to acquire the information required, it was con-
cluded that the 'flexibility' of terrorists (vis- a-vis the state) was to their
advantage, adding that they have various means of acquiring infor-
mation for their 'missions' including direct observation. On the sup-
ply side, the information currently available through federal Web sites
was not considered crucial because the information was often spread
across various state and nonstate Web sites or because the available
information on federal Web sites was simply not relevant for terror-
ists. Fewer than 1 percent of the 629 federal databases were believed to
contain sensitive information, and the accessibility of these databases
was often already limited. Furthermore, closing the federal databases
was believed to have a limited effect because much of the information
25
See http://www.commoncause.org for more information.
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