Reference: Secrecy Report Card 2009

With a tip of the hat to authors Patrice McDermott and Army Fuller Bennett as well as Steven Aftergood and the other founders and leaders of Open the Government, here is their Secrecy Report Card for 2009.  Their motto is “Less Secrecy, More Democracy.  Amen!

Journal: Special Forces Collect, But Cannot Process

Phi Beta Iota: Tip of the Hat to Steven Aftergood and the Federation of American Scientists. “Ongoing SOF operations demonstrate the ability to collect significant amounts of pocket litter, hard copy documents, hard drives, cell phones, and other important hard copy and electronic media with significant intelligence value. However, without specialized expeditionary processing, this information …

Journal: Information Sharing as a Form of Secrecy

Phi Beta Iota: Tip of the hat to Steven Aftergood and the Federation of American Scientists. “Although information sharing might seem like the antithesis of secrecy, the term has come to be used to refer exclusively to sharing within the government, including state and local officials and certain selected private partners. Unlike “transparency,” which is …