Secrecy and Security News
Newer News: May 2011
April 2011
- Detainees' Lawyers Can't Click on Leaked Documents by Scott Shane, New York Times, April 27. "Anyone surfing the Internet this week is free to read leaked documents about the prisoners held by the American military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to print them out or e-mail them to friends. Except, that is, for the lawyers who represent the prisoners."
- File Under: Failure by Fred Kaplan, Slate, April 26. "How did Obama's effort to make government more transparent go so wrong?"
- More information being classified, report says by Sean Reilly, Federal Times, April 26. "Agencies are classifying significantly more information despite orders by President Obama that agencies be more selective in what they keep secret, a new report indicates."
- Barack Obama on Bradley Manning: 'He broke the law' by MJ Lee and Abby Phillip, Politico, April 22. "President Barack Obama's assertion at a recent California fundraiser that Bradley Manning 'broke the law' may have run afoul of presidential protocol, according to legal analysts who have been tracking the case of the Army private charged in the WikiLeaks case.
- Budget could close the door on open government by Ed O'Keefe, Washington Post, April 14. "Transparency advocates warn that the 2011 federal budget set for approval today by Congress could close the door on President Obama's ambitious government transparency goals, ending one of his earliest moves as president to open up federal agencies to closer public scrutiny."
- White House visitor logs leave out many by Viveca Novak and Fred Schulte, Politico, April 13. "The White House website proudly boasts of making available "over 1,000,000 records of everyone who's come through the doors of the White House" via a searchable database. Yet the Center's analysis shows that the logs routinely omit or cloud key details about the identity of visitors, whom they met with and the nature of their visits."
- Amateur Observations Suggest 20-Year-Old Spy Satellite Was Destroyed by Leonard David, Space.com, April 13. "A 20-year-old U.S. spy satellite has been flagged by amateur satellite observers as missing in action -- a sign that the classified spacecraft may have been purposely destroyed in Earth's atmosphere, skywatchers say."
- CENTCOM has no records on Fundamental Classification Guidance Review, FOIA response dated March 25. "Despite our extensive and careful search for documents pertaining to your request, we were unable to locate responsive information."
- Senate panel proposes that leakers of classified information lose pensions by Walter Pincus, Washington Post, April 6. "A Senate panel has proposed legislation that could strip government pensions from active and retired members of the intelligence community who knowingly avoid pre-publication review procedures when authoring works or delivering speeches."
- Secrecy in Shreds by Bill Keller, New York Times Magazine, April 3. "For those charged with keeping secrets, WikiLeaks is a wake-up call. So what should the government do to make the leaker's task - and my job as a nosy journalist - harder?
Older News: March 2011