Despite the events of Sept. 11, the withholding of state driver's license records and other proposed public recordsexemptions are a poor way to serve the public.

As many as eight suspects in the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings had recently obtained Florida drivers' licenses or ID cards as they trained for history's deadliest terrorist atrocities. This is public knowledge because Florida drivers' licenses are public records. What the public does not know is whether the licenses were issued properly or carelessly.

That, too, should be public knowledge, but the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles is improperly withholding the records that would answer this question. It says it is doing so at the request of federal and state investigators, who consider the records essential to a criminal probe. But though the law clearly shields documents created during such an investigation until it is finished, there is no provision and no known precedent for sealing records that existed beforehand.

The FBI and Florida Department of Law Enforcement haven't offered a persuasive reason for flouting the public records law -- and its underlying authority, the Florida Constitution -- in such a way. They say they don't want to be tripping over reporters as they do their work, but the authorities themselves have revealed far more about the suspected terrorists than anything the driver's license files might contain.

The terrorists knew how they got the licenses. So, probably, do their surviving accomplices. The department that issued the licenses knows. And so do the FBI and FDLE. The only people who don't know are the law-abiding residents of Florida, who could be excused for wondering at this point whether there's a coverup going on. The license division won't even say what documents the suspects produced to establish their identities.

The suspicion of a coverup is reinforced by significant language in the antiterrorism recommendations that the FDLE and the State Division of Emergency Management submitted to Gov. Jeb Bush Oct. 4. One provision calls for unspecified measures "to eliminate the inadvertent issuance of fraudulent driver licenses." (Emphasis supplied.) The report also proposes purchasing equipment "to create a record of companion documents used to establish identity" and the use of "layered biometrics technology, such as facial recognition, fingerprint and iris scanning."

This is expensive technology. Considering the hundreds of locations that process thousands of driver's license applications and renewals each day, it is likely to be an extremely costly recommendation. Indeed, it may be necessary, and to say that it costs too much might be the falsest of economies in light of what happened Sept. 11.

But the people of Florida cannot make that judgment, and neither can their legislators, so long as the truth of what happened before Sept. 11 remains wrongfully concealed.

The same healthy skepticism is owed to certain other recommendations that propose public record exemptions for "arrest booking documents and information that if released may compromise an ongoing investigation."

In whose judgment? FDLE Commissioner Tim Moore concedes, to his credit, that police shouldn't conduct secret arrests or quarantine public records without a judge's approval, but even that much raises serious constitutional issues going far beyond the right to public records.

Secret arrests and secret detention are police state tactics, and for America to resort to them -- as federal authorities have already done on a massive scale in the Sept. 11 investigation -- is a victory for our enemies.

In San Diego, for example, three students have been held as material witnesses under such Star Chamber conditions that the judge would not publish his order explaining why, and their attorney complained that he was not told where they were held and was not allowed to contact them.

Florida legislators, who are at best inconsistent friends of open government, need to examine the FDLE's proposals skeptically. Terrorist acts and terrorist plots currently violate so many existing federal laws that perhaps federal authority can be relied on to deal with them. Clearly, the Florida public records law should not be a vehicle for revealing threat assessments that show the vulnerabilities to terrorism of the Capitol, a power plant or any other sensitive facility. But neither should any exemption be so generous as to allow a sense of false security in the absence of effective oversight.

The Legislature's recent disrespect for public records is not encouraging. For example, the Dale Earnhardt legislation was so hastily passed, in such an emotional rush to prevent commercial exploitation of the dead race car driver's autopsy photographs, that Florida medical schools can no longer use autopsy photos to instruct their students. A much more thoughtful approach must be given to any legislation inspired by the events of Sept. 11. Legislate in haste, repent at leisure.

The question persists: What's in those driver's license records?

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