NOAA Fisheries renews effort to show it can keep a secret

By Michael Doyle | 03/08/2024 01:37 PM EST

The agency Friday said it will take another look at the confidentiality rules tied to its fishery monitoring efforts.

NOAA headquarters.

NOAA headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. Francis Chung/POLITICO

NOAA Fisheries now wants another go at updating the confidentiality of the information it nets through both human and electronic monitoring.

Nearly a dozen years after it retreated from an earlier rulemaking effort, the federal agency Friday proposed again to refresh the confidentiality rules it called “outdated, inefficient, and redundant.”

“Given that the regulations were last revised in 1998, they do not address recent methods of collecting observer information through electronic monitoring systems,” NOAA Fisheries stated.

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The agency added that it “intends to update and modernize” how it protects confidential information to “reflect advances” in the information it collects.

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