Washington - The overwhelming majority of United States government websites that reveal information about airports, power plants, military bases and other attractive terrorist targets need not be censored because similar or better information is easily available elsewhere, a goverment-financed study found.
The Rand Corporation identified only four website pages that might merit the restrictions imposed after the September 11 attacks. It urged government officials to consider reopening public access to about three dozen websites that were withdrawn from the Internet in the name of homeland security.
"It's a good time to take a closer look at the choices that they made at the time," said John Baker, principal author of the study that was funded by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, the government's intelligence mapping agency.
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Advocates of open government said the report shows that President George Bush's administration acted rashly after the suicide attacks when it scrubbed numerous government websites.
'It was a gigantic mistake' "It was a gigantic mistake, and I hope the study brings some rationality back to this policy," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' project on government secrecy. "Up to now, decisions have been made on a knee-jerk basis."
Rand's National Defence Research Institute identified 629 federal databases accessible from the Internet that contain critical data about specific locations and "appeared to be the most sensitive sites".
The study, conducted between mid-2002 and mid-2003, found no federal websites that contained target information essential to a terrorist - in other words, that without which an attack couldn't be launched.
It identified four databases - less than one percent - where restricting access probably would enhance security.
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