[JURIST] Halliburton [JURIST news archive] subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root Services, Inc. (KBR) has been violating a US Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) [official website] direction on classifying proprietary data by claiming protection for information normally in the public sphere, according to a report [text, PDF] issued Friday by Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen Jr. [official website]. Bowen wrote:

The routine use of proprietary markings when the data marked is not internal contractor information . . . is an abuse of FAR procedures . . . The result is that information normally releasable to the public must be protected from public release just because the information gathered . . ., pursuant to KBR’s contractual obligations, was marked as proprietary. In effect, KBR has turned FAR provisions designed to protect truly proprietary information and to enhance procurement competition . . . into a mechanism to prevent the government from releasing normally transparent information, thus potentially hindering competition and oversight.