From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield. The Homeland Security Act passed this week by both houses of Congress will result in the biggest overhaul of the federal bureaucracy in 50 years.

It will also have broad ramifications for the relationship between the federal government and its citizens.

Among other changes, it will allow the government authority to deny previously routine requests

under the Freedom of Information Act. For instance, vulnerabilities of power plants could be hidden

from view, a circumstance that concerns Mark Tapscott. He's the director of the

Center for Media and Public Policy at the Heritage Foundation, and he joins me now. Mark, welcome.

Thank you very much. It's good to be here. Well, let's start with the obvious. What is it

about the Homeland Security Act that threatens us? Well, my particular concern deals with a particular section in it that declares that material

and information and data that a private company voluntarily makes available to the government

as part of the effort against terrorism would be exempt from the FOI.

You don't have to be a Harvard lawyer to imagine the many ways that one could construe all kinds of things to be related to the war on terrorism.

Well, in dealing with freedom of information requests in the past, the government has always been able to invoke in a a broad way, national security as a reason for not disclosing information that journalists or any citizen is seeking.

Why is it materially different to have this anti-terrorism component in the act?

Well, I've been a journalist for 15 years now, and I was in government before then,

in both the executive branch and the legislative branch.

And I can tell you that government will inevitably tend to interpret its own statutes and

regulations to its own benefit.

And that's the problem with this.

On its face, perhaps it does seem

somewhat specific. In fact, it's not. It says all information voluntarily turned over that has

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