On March 19, a little over six months after the terrorist attacks of September 11, the White House took action to "safeguard information" in the name of homeland security. The White House released two memos providing steps agencies should take to protect government information from being used by terrorists. The memos are striking in two ways. First, it is surprising how little guidance the memos provide to agencies. For example, there is no information to help agencies in determining what information should be restored to web sites or what steps agencies should take in developing criteria to use in determining what information should be restored or restricted. There is no discussion of involving the public to help sort through the balancing between public access and security that might be needed. Second, the memos are very troubling in their reach. The White House talks of "sensitive documents" without defining what the term "sensitive" means. One of the memos encourages agencies to review "sensitive but unclassified" information for the "need to protect such sensitive information from inappropriate disclosure…" While the memo calls for a balancing with the benefits "that result from the open and efficient exchange of scientific, technical, and like information," it places a heavy emphasis on nondisclosure. In fact, it provides rudimentary arguments for using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) as a means for exempting such information from public disclosure. The first memo, from White House Chief of Staff, Andrew Card, was sent to the heads of all federal departments and agencies ordering them to undergo "an immediate reexamination" of current measures for identifying and protecting information on weapons of mass destruction. The Card memo goes on to broaden the focus beyond just information on weapons of mass destruction to also include "other information that could be misused to harm the security of our nation and the safety of our people." However, this categorization of "information that could be misused to harm" is so broad and general that an enormous amount of information that is significantly beneficial to the public would be included. Agencies and departments have 90 days to conduct this review and report to the Office of Homeland Security. The second memo was from Laura Kimberly, Richard Huff, and Dan Metcalf, the Acting Director of the Information Security Oversight Office at the National Archives and Records Administration and the Co-Directors of the Justice Department's Office of Information and Privacy, respectively. The second memo provides guidance, prepared at Card’s request, for this effort. The vague guidance urges each agency to look at its classified, reclassified and declassified information, but also creates a new category, called "sensitive but unclassified." The guidance states that the decision to withhold information from the public "should be carefully considered, on a case-by-case basis," and that agencies should refer to the new October 12, 2001 policies established by Attorney General John Ashcroft regarding implementation of the Freedom of Information Act. The guidance also indicates that the government may consider information filed voluntarily by companies to be protected from the Freedom of Information Act under the existing trade secrets and confidential business information exemption. These memos, by themselves, do not demonstrate an erosion of public access. But they are part a larger mosaic that represents a huge shift from policies premised on the belief that the public has a right-to-know to one based on need-to-know. Increasingly agencies are requiring the public to justify how they would use the information in order to determine whether public access should be granted. From our perspective, this trend is very disturbing. The full text of the memos is available online.