Today many people are frightened. Even the mail can be a deadly weapon. In this climate of fear, there is an impulse to do whatever is possible to increase security, such as checking driver’s licenses three times in order to board a plane. In doing everything and anything to protect citizens, federal agencies have been overhauling their websites so that they don’t include information that might be helpful to terrorists. In this same spirit of protecting the country from dangerous information, the Department of Defense last week purchased the exclusive rights to photographs of Afghanistan taken by the world’s best high-resolution imaging satellite.

Under this arrangement, the Pentagon will have complete control of all satellite images of Afghanistan. Even after the war on terror is over, the military will still control the images. The government could have achieved this control through legal means, but this would have required a much higher burden of proof than simply purchasing the images. The result is that the media can only acquire these satellite images at the military’s discretion. What is remarkable is that images taken by the satellite are unclassified and the national security argument for a government monopoly on the photographs is tenuous at best. The military argues that it is not trying to prevent the flow of information to the public but rather that it needs this information for military planning and cannot afford to have adversaries know what images the US military is using.

In a war, there is always a need for some level of secrecy and some satellite images may be too sensitive for public consumption. However, to presume that all satellite images of Afghanistan are critical to the safety of troops is ridiculous. The Pentagon has a less-than-stellar record of being honest, often hiding behind a contrived veil of national security. Transparency keeps the military honest and prevents abuses of power.

There is also the civil libertarian issue regarding government censorship of non-classified photographs; a protocol could and should have been developed that would have safeguarded legitimate secrets while still preserving the public’s and press’ right to information. In this same vein, federal websites have been stripped of much of their information in an attempt to prevent access to, as Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Rosetta Virgilio said, "anything that might be sensitive or might be helpful to adversaries." This is a laudable goal, but the problem is that all the government is really doing is making dangerous information slightly more difficult to access.

Determined terrorists who need information that is no longer available on the internet will go to the library or to government "reading rooms." However, removing information from government sites does make access to information more difficult for students and concerned citizens. In effect, removing information from websites adds inconvenience on top of fear while adding no real benefit to security.

Furthermore, information has been removed in an indiscriminant manner, with federal agencies rushing — without thinking — to dismantle their websites. The haste in which the removal of information was done makes it possible for sensitive information to remain. What is certain is that valuable information to the public has been removed.

The internet is an extremely convenient way to access the vast but cumbersome information resources of the federal government. Making it unavailable simply makes it more difficult for people to get important governmental information — such as whether the chemical plant next door is producing dangerous toxins.

The new political reality means that some information should not be available to the public. For example, Pakistan was able to prepare nuclear weapons tests without U.S. knowledge because it knew the schedule of American spy satellites. This was not the result of crackerjack Pakistani intelligence–the information was found on the internet. The challenge is to find information that makes the country truly vulnerable and then to stop its distribution. Making this distinction requires a thoughtful rather than a categorical approach.

The reduction of governmental information on the internet and the government’s purchase of all the satellite photography of Afghanistan are relatively minor issues. And, while they may not seem terribly important, they are endemic of a larger problem. Many people are so busy responding to world events that they have stopped thinking about their reactions to those events. This is true, not just of ordinary citizens, but also of every level of government.

When fear overcomes the ability to think reasonably the result is misguided, even dangerous policy. The United States needs to rise to the challenge of confronting terrorism with reason and respect for individual liberties rather than fear.