Inspector General John Roth accused the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) of abusing its power to hide information. In a report released on Friday by the TSA internal auditor, Roth said that TSA declared a lot of the security problems at the John F. Kennedy Airport in New York as "classified" data.

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Reports of the agency the past few years contained the same details, which made the auditor suspicious that TSA is hiding something by declaring the bulk of the information as "sensitive security information" or SSI.

Roth appealed to TSA Administrator John Pistole to release the report, but the latter ignored the request for months and delayed the report's release.

In December 2014, Pistole quit his job, and it was only after he left the agency that a lower TSA official provided Roth the report but with a request to keep the SSI classification.

As a result, Roth blacked out the total number of vulnerabilities and seriousness in his public report.

However, he spoke against the abuse of the use of SSI. "Over-classification is the enemy of good government. SSI markings should be used only to protect transportation security, rather than, as I fear occurred here, to allow government program officials to conceal negative information within a report," quotes Washington Times.

Among the breaches that Roth found are secure doors are left open, no visitor logs who entered rooms with sensitive communications and the use of secure data cabinets to store cleaning supplies.

While Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokeswoman Ginette Magana didn't discuss the reason why parts of the IG audit were classified as SSI, she said the DHS has initiated corrective action on airport systems to address current vulnerabilities.

She stresses, "Ensuring the security and integrity of our information technology systems that support our wide-ranging missions to protect the homeland is a high priority for the DHS," quotes Govinfosecurity.com.

TagsTransportation Security Administration, airport security