Review - ChemLock and Chemical-Terrorism Vulnerability Information

This is part of a series of blog posts looking at the potential for the authorization of CISA’s existing ChemLock program and using it as a voluntary replacement for the now defunct Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program. Other posts in this series include:

• CFATS is Dead,

• Making ChemLock Safety Act Compliant – ChemLock Program Background,

• ChemLock and Tiering,

• Reader Comment – TSDB Screening for ChemLock,

• ChemLock and TSDB Screening,

• ChemLock and Risk Based Performance Standards.  

NOTE: Previous articles in this series have been removed from the CFSN Detailed Analysis paywall.

The CFATS program collected a great deal of sensitive information from facilities; both covered facilities and facilities submitting Top Screen information to see if they were to become covered facilities. The information provided to CISA that would be of potential interest to any terrorist organization planning on attacking the facilities. To prevent that sort of information sharing, it was protected by the Chemical-Terrorism Vulnerability Information (CVI) program.

While the CFATS program was in effect, the CVI program was authorized by 6 USC 623. The regulations concerning the program can be found at 6 CFR 27.400. CISA’s predecessor published a revised guidance manual for the program in September of 2008. When CISA stood up the ChemLock program, they made no attempt to apply CVI protections to information provided under the new program, maintaining that, since the two programs were separate and distinct, there was no statutory authorization for applying the CVI protections to the ChemLock program.

Any attempt to authorize the ChemLock program is going to have to specifically deal with the protection of controlled unclassified information submitted to and developed by that program. Adaption of the Chemical-Terrorism Vulnerability Information (CVI) program from the CFATS program would be the most obvious way of dealing with necessity.

 

For more information on the potential use of the CFATS CVI program to support the ChemLock program, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/chemlock-and-chemical-terrorism-vulnerability - subscription required.