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Secrecy and Security News

Newer News: April 2008

March 2008

• Extending the GAO's Reach by Steven Aftergood, letter to the Editor, Washington Post, March 31. "Inexplicably, the congressional intelligence committees have failed in recent years to take advantage of all of the oversight tools at their disposal, such as GAO audits."
• Senator pushes alternative to full CRS report access by Dan Friedman, Congress Daily, March 28. "A bill urging the Senate to make Congressional Research Service reports publically available is stalled in the Senate Rules Committee and may be the latest of a series of such efforts to fail."
• Marines restore access to online documents by Wade-Hahn Chan, Federal Computer Week, March 27. "The Marine Corps has reposted electronic doctrine documents after taking them off-line about a year ago. The restoration follows a March 6 Freedom of Information Act request sent by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) for soft copies of the unclassified documents."
• Civil Libertarians See a Hopeful Dawn in 2009 ... or Not by Ryan Singel, Wired, March 27. "Warrantless wiretaps. The Patriot Act. Presidential secrecy. For seven years, civil libertarians and open-government advocates have felt they've been wandering in the wilderness, with few allies in Congress and a White House that only gets bolder in its contempt."
• US Marine Corps will restore online access to unclassified doctrine, reply to FAS FOIA request, March 19. "Publications are actively being loaded with the goal of having all distribution A publications (approved for public release) loaded onto this site as soon as possible."
• Iraq? Iran? Who Can Tell the Difference? by Justin Rood, ABC News The Blotter, March 26. "Do you have trouble keeping Iran and Iraq straight? Don't worry -- so do folks at the Pentagon, sometimes."
• Iraqi Spies and the Voodoo Secret by Al Kamen, Washington Post, March 26. "The shocking Iraqi analysis says that Ibn 'Abd al Wahhab's grandfather's true name was not 'Sulayman' but 'Shulman.' (Of course! The Saudi Shulmans!)"
• Intelligence experts called to testify for ex-AIPAC duo by Ron Kampeas, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, March 18. "Two former staffers of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who are facing charges that they traded in secrets now have on their side the two most recent arbiters of what is and isn't a U.S. secret."
• Key New Witnesses Sign On For Defense in Aipac Case by Josh Gerstein, New York Sun, March 17. "The prosecution of two pro-Israel lobbyists charged with obtaining and distributing classified information is looking shakier after two former American ambassadors to Israel and two officials who once oversaw security classification policy for the federal government agreed to testify for the defense."
• Anonymous Activists Gaining Strength Online by Ben Arnoldy, Christian Science Monitor, March 17. "Clever use of technology is allowing new activist groups like Anonymous and the whistle-blower website Wikileaks to agitate without a centralized leadership and an identifiable membership."
• Agencies run more than a decade late on Freedom of Information requests by Kevin Bogardus, The Hill, March 13. "Several federal agencies are running more than 15 years late on public record requests sent under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) when the first President Bush was still in office."
• Justice Department says legal opinion on Executive orders is classified by John Byrne, Raw Story, March 12. "The Bush Administration's Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel is refusing to turn over a document providing its analysis of Bush's justification for executive orders."
• Army reopens online library to public by Wade-Hahn Chan, Federal Computer Week, March 7. "The Army reopened its Reimer Digital Library to the public only a month after it decided to close it off. It announced the decision to reopen the library Feb. 21."
• FAS Requests Release of Contents US Marine Corps Doctrine Web Site (PDF), FOIA Request, March 5. "Alternatively, we request that public access to the USMC doctrine web site be restored."
• Diese Dokumente bergen Sprengstoff von Thomas Thiel, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 6. "Wikileaks sei für den Kampf gegen die Zensur in undemokratischen Regimen gebildet worden, könne in demokratischen Staaten aber auch antidemokratisch wirken."

Older News: February 2008

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