SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2018, Issue No. 20
March 26, 2018

Secrecy News Blog: https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/

CONGRESS REQUIRES PUBLICATION OF CRS REPORTS

All non-confidential reports of the Congressional Research Service must be made publicly available online through a Government Publishing Office website within 90 to 270 days under a provision of the 2018 omnibus appropriations act that was passed by Congress and signed by the President last week.

The move is the culmination of more than two decades of efforts to encourage, cajole or coerce Congress into making the reports broadly available to the public. (See "Liberating the Congressional Research Service," Secrecy & Government Bulletin, March 1997.)

"Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports are the gold standard when it comes to even-handed, non-partisan analysis of the important issues before Congress," said Daniel Schuman of Demand Progress, who led the most recent campaign for online public access. "For too long, they've only been primarily available to the well-connected and the well-heeled. At long last, Congress will make the non-confidential reports available to every American for free," he said. See "Long-Proprietary Congressional Research Reports Will Now Be Made Public" by Charles S. Clark, Government Executive, March 23, 2018.

In fact, however, the large majority of CRS reports have already been posted online and are easily available to the public, though not through government websites. So the net increase in "transparency" resulting from the new legislation is less than it would have been years ago.

After President Trump claimed on Friday that the omnibus appropriations law will provide the largest military pay increase in over a decade, a New York Times fact-checking column cited a CRS report to demonstrate that the claim was "imprecise" and "slightly exaggerated." See "Trump's Objections Require Some Corrections" by Linda Qiu, March 23.

The Times article provided a link to an online copy of the January 2018 CRS report on military pay.

ELECTRIC GRID SECURITY STILL "A WORK IN PROGRESS"

Threats to the U.S. electric power grid in recent years, including actual attacks on transmission substations, have prompted utilities and regulators to adopt various steps to enhance grid security. A new report from the Congressional Research Service reviews the observable changes in security practices to date and discusses the current threat environment. See NERC Standards for Bulk Power Physical Security: Is the Grid More Secure?, March 19, 2018.

Other new and updated reports from the Congressional Research Service include the following.

Bankruptcy Basics: A Primer, March 22, 2018:

ATF's Ability to Regulate "Bump Stocks", CRS Legal Sidebar, March 22, 2018:

Eight Mechanisms to Enact Procedural Change in the U.S. Senate, CRS Insight, March 20, 2018:

Net Neutrality: Will the FTC Have Authority Over Broadband Service Providers?, CRS Legal Sidebar, March 20, 2018:

Section 232 Steel and Aluminum Tariffs: Potential Economic Implications, CRS Insight, March 19, 2018:

Unauthorized Childhood Arrivals: Legislative Activity in the 115th Congress, March 22, 2018:

Turkey: Background and U.S. Relations in Brief, updated March 23, 2018:

Iran's Foreign and Defense Policies, updated March 20, 2018:

It Belongs in a Museum: Sovereign Immunity Shields Iranian Antiquities Even When It Does Not Protect Iran, CRS Legal Sidebar, March 22, 2018:

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Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists.

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