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From the Blogs
National Security Secrecy and the Right to Know:
Steven Aftergood writes that while almost everyone would agree that
national security secrecy has a role to play in an open society, such
secrecy must be carefully circumscribed if robust public access to
government information is to be preserved. A set of principles that open
societies around the world can use to help guide and limit the
application of secrecy was recently published by the Open Society
Justice Initiative.
Edward Snowden, Source of NSA Leaks Steps Forward:
Last week, a former CIA employee and NSA contractor named Edward
Snowden identified himself as the source of the the serial revelations
of classified documents concerning U.S. intelligence surveillance
activities that were disclosed. In the history of unauthorized
disclosures of classified information, a voluntary admission of having
committed such disclosures is the exception, not the norm. And it
confers a degree of dignity on the action. Yet it stops short of a full
acceptance of responsibility.
Nukes in Europe- Secrecy Under Siege:
Two former Dutch prime ministers publicly confirmed the presence of
nuclear weapons at Volkel Air Base in the Netherlands, one of six bases
in NATO that still host US nuclear weapons. It's not news that U.S.
nukes are stored at this base, it's news that two Dutch prime ministers
have confirmed it. This situation presents an opportunity to engage
Russia about increasing the transparency of non-strategic nuclear
weapons in Europe. Hans Kristensen writes that the continuation of
nuclear secrecy no longer serves a beneficial purpose. The
secrecy is not needed for safety or national security; those needs are
taken care of by guards, guns, gates, and overall military and political
postures. Instead, the secrecy fuels mistrust and rumors that lock NATO
and Russia into old mindsets, postures, and relations.
NASA Releases Online Library on Risk Mitigation: NASA
has produced a library of “knowledge bundles” describing how various
technical problems that arose in the course of its space technology
programs were successfully resolved. The library was released online
last week.
DoD Warns Employees of Classified Info in the Public Domain:
In the wake of a new wave of classified documents appearing online last
week, the Department of Defense instructed employees and contractors
that they must neither seek out nor download classified material that is
in the public domain.
Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and More from CRS:
Secrecy News has obtained recently released CRS reports on topics such
as current developments on the CTBT, carbon capture and sequestration, foreign assistance to North Korea and responding to changes in the Middle East.
On to Mars:
Deep space is a dangerous place. No air, millions of miles to the
nearest food and water, stray comets and meteors. And then there’s the
radiation as well – outside the protection of Earth’s magnetic field
radiation levels are much higher than what we experience at the surface
of our planet, and the radiation that suffuses space is a lot more
damaging than what penetrates to sea level. In a new post on the
ScienceWonk Blog, Dr. Y examines the risks from radiation in space.
Secret Surveillance and the Crisis of Legitimacy: The public uproar over the latest disclosures of secret domestic surveillance by The Guardian and the Washington Post
different cannot produce a precisely analogous result, because the
oversight mechanisms intended to correct abuses already exist and indeed
had signed off on the surveillance activities. Steven Aftergood
takes a look at all three branches of government and how they have
misrepresented the scope of official surveillance, misgauged public
concern and evaded public accountability.
FISA Court Says It Cannot Easily Summarize Opinions:
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) told the Senate
Intelligence Committee last March that there are “serious obstacles”
that would prevent it from preparing summaries of Court opinions for
declassification and public disclosure. FISC Presiding Judge Reggie B.
Walton replied in a March 27
letter that the preparation of unclassified (or declassifiable)
summaries was not a simple matter. Judge Walton did not completely
dismiss the proposal. He said that he would encourage the members of the
Court “to
consider structuring opinions to facilitate declassification, if they
believe doing so is warranted in a particular case.
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