After a court issued a ruling last spring that a Yemeni detainee held in U.S. custody should be released, the opinion was briefly published in the case docket and then abruptly withdrawn for classification review. When it reappeared, reporter Dafna Linzer discovered, it was not only redacted but had been significantly altered.
“The alterations are extensive,” she found. “Sentences were rewritten. Footnotes that described disputes and discrepancies in the government’s case were deleted. Even the date and circumstances of [the detainee’s] arrest were changed.”
Yet in what seems like an insult to the integrity of the judicial process, no indication was given that the original opinion had been modified — not just censored — as a consequence of the classification review. ProPublica obtained both versions of the ruling and published a comparison of them, highlighting the missing or altered passages. See “In Gitmo Opinion, Two Versions of Reality” by Dafna Linzer, ProPublica (co-published with The National Law Journal), October 8.
Congress must enact a Digital Public Infrastructure Act, a recognition that the government’s most fundamental responsibility in the digital era is to provide a solid, trustworthy foundation upon which people, businesses, and communities can build.
To increase the real and perceived benefit of research funding, funding agencies should develop challenge goals for their extramural research programs focused on the impact portion of their mission.
Without trusted mechanisms to ensure privacy while enabling secure data access, essential R&D stalls, educational innovation stalls, and U.S. global competitiveness suffers.
Satellite imagery has long served as a tool for observing on-the-ground activity worldwide, and offers especially valuable insights into the operation, development, and physical features related to nuclear technology.