For over a century, the American Association of Law Libraries has been a strong voice on a broad array of... View Article
Continue readingWelcome News
Here’s some welcome news. Yesterday, President Obama issued a memo calling on his administration to conduct what The Atlantic’s Marc... View Article
Continue readingHappy Birthday FOIA
Steven Aftergood at Secrecy News reminds us that Friday July 4th is the 42nd anniversary of Lyndon Johnson signing the... View Article
Continue readingHyper-Hyper-Classification
The Bush Administration's lust for secrecy is well documented. And as davidk at TPM Muckraker wrote recently, Bush and Company is "the most secretive administration in history."
But even so this latest gambit by the Administration is over the line. The Washington Post's Walter Pincus reports on how earlier this month the Bush White House issued a memorandum outlining new Executive Branch rules on the handling of sensitive but not classified information. They coined the term "Controlled Unclassified Information" (How's that for bureaucratic doublespeak?) for information so sensitive that its disclosure would create "risk of substantial harm." They replaced the term "Sensitive but Unclassified."
Continue readingGAO’s Oversight of NSA. Not.
Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, writing at Secrecy News, reports that the Congress has not used the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to perform any oversight of the National Security Agency (NSA), despite maintaining an office there to do just that.
Continue readingDespite multi-billion dollar acquisition failures at NSA and the Agency's controversial, possibly illegal surveillance practices . . .Congress has declined to summon all of its oversight resources such as GAO to address such issues.