The leading presidential candidates should be questioned about their willingness to depart from the secrecy practices that have characterized the Bush Administration, wrote civil libertarian Nat Hentoff in his syndicated column this week.

Whether it concerns domestic surveillance, coercive interrogation, or extraordinary rendition, “I haven’t heard any of the frontrunners stress this need for a clean break with the Bush administration’s use of a ‘unitary executive’ doctrine to cloak these and other extrajudicial — and indeed extralegal — practices in deep secrecy,” Mr. Hentoff wrote.

See “The Dark Bush Legacy on Secrecy” by Nat Hentoff, Washington Times, February 25.

The article followed up on a related piece that I wrote for the Nieman Watchdog earlier this month, “The Next President Should Open Up the Bush Administration’s Record.”

The simplest, most effective and most achievable way to improve congressional oversight of intelligence might be to utilize the Government Accountability Office to audit and evaluate intelligence programs, a prospect that is opposed by the Director of National Intelligence.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on Friday, February 29 to consider pending legislation that would bolster GAO’s role in intelligence oversight. The Federation of American Scientists will be represented among the witnesses.

“The need for more effective oversight and accountability of our intelligence community has never been greater,” said Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI) last year. “Yet the ability of Congress to ensure that the intelligence community has sufficient resources and capability of performing its mission has never been more in question.”

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence provided an overview of U.S. intelligence data mining development programs in a new report to Congress (pdf).

Data mining is used by intelligence agencies to search through databases in order to discern patterns of activity that could indicate a threat to national security.

The new report presents brief descriptions of several data mining-related intelligence projects, some of which have previously been publicly identified and others that appear to be newly disclosed.

“The Video Analysis and Content Extraction (VACE) project seeks to automate what is now a very tedious, generally human-powered process of reviewing video for content that is potentially of intelligence value.”

“Reynard is a seedling effort to study the emerging phenomenon of social (particularly terrorist) dynamics in virtual worlds and large-scale online games and their implications for the Intelligence Community.”

“Because application of results from these research projects may ultimately have implications for privacy and civil liberties, IARPA [the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency] is also investing in projects that develop privacy protecting technologies,” the report stated.

The ODNI Report to Congress is unclassified, but was accompanied by a classified annex. See “Data Mining Report,” ODNI Report to Congress, February 15, 2008

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Although we have declined more requests for comment about Wikileaks than we have responded to, some participants in the project feel that we have said too much.

Jay Lim of Wikileaks sent the following advisory email today:

“Who’s side are you on here Stephen? It is time this constant harping stopped.”

“You know full well if you make n comments about us and m negative ones about us it’ll only be the negative comment that is reported — since everyone else has only positive things to say and by your position at FAS there is an expectation of positive comment. You are not a child. As a result of your previous criticism it seem you are becoming the ‘go to’ man for negative comments on Wikileaks. Over the last year, our most quoted critic has not been a right wing radio host, it has not been the Chinese ambassador, it has not been Pentagon bureaucrats, it has been you Stephen. You are the number one public enemy of this project. On top of everything else, your quote is the only critical entry on our Wikipedia page. Some friend of openness!”

“We are very disappointed in your lack of support and suggest you cool it. If you don’t, we will, with great reluctance, be forced to respond.”

“Jay Lim”

 

Some noteworthy new reports from the Congressional Research Service on nuclear weapons policy include the following (all pdf).

“U.S. Nuclear Weapons: Changes in Policy and Force Structure,” updated January 23, 2008.

“Nuclear Arms Control: The Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty,” updated January 18, 2008.

“Managing the Nuclear Fuel Cycle: Policy Implications of Expanding Global Access to Nuclear Power,” updated January 30, 2008.

 

The U.S. Army said today that it would restore public access to the online Reimer Digital Library of Army publications, after having blocked the site on February 6.

Last week, the Federation of American Scientists filed a Freedom of Information Act request asking for a copy of the entire Reimer collection for publication on the FAS website or, alternatively, for renewed public access to the site.

The Army chose the latter option.

“TRADOC [U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command] is currently in the process of making it available to the public again,” said Mrs. Alverita Mack, a Freedom of Information Act officer at Fort Eustis, Virginia.

“The Army has seen the error of its ways,” said another Defense Department FOIA officer. “Also, they want you to withdraw your FOIA request.”

The dispute over the shuttered website was reported today in the Washington Post. See “Army Blocks Public’s Access to Documents in Web-Based Library” by Christopher Lee, February 21.

By moving the Reimer site behind the password-protected Army Knowledge Online (AKO) firewall, the Army placed the public at a disadvantage, but not only the public.

“The Army has not only restricted access to the public but to everyone else in DoD as well,” one Navy correspondent explained to Secrecy News. “So… those working for the AF, Navy, Marines, etc will not be able to access these documents — unless they are able to get an AKO account — which isn’t a given.”

“I happen to have an AKO account but only because I know someone who was willing to sponsor me,” the Navy official wrote. “It is getting harder and harder to access information within DoD let alone from outside it!”

The Freedom of Information Act is not often an effective mechanism for changing government policy, nor was it intended to be. But in this case, where the Army had moved to block public access to thousands of releasable documents, the FOIA proved to be the optimal tool for compelling a change in policy.

Mrs. Mack, the Army FOIA officer, said today that she did not know exactly when the Reimer Digital Library would again be accessible. And, she said, it might end up at a different URL than before. We indicated that we would withdraw our FOIA request after public access is fully restored.

The Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility has declined to open an investigation into allegations that Justice Department attorneys improperly refused to respond to the Information Security Oversight Office when it challenged the Office of the Vice President’s failure to cooperate with ISOO’s oversight of the classification system.

In a January 2, 2008 complaint, the Federation of American Scientists had argued that, under the terms of the President’s executive order, the Justice Department was obliged to render an opinion on the executive order’s applicability to the Office of the Vice President when ISOO asked for it. Yet Justice attorneys at the Office of Legal Counsel refused to do so.

The Office of Professional Responsibility was not persuaded.

“We have concluded that the facts do not raise an issue of attorney misconduct that requires an investigation by this office,” wrote H. Marshall Jarrett, OPR Counsel in a February 14 letter to FAS (pdf).

“This matter does not involve an allegation of affirmative malfeasance, but rather, the alleged improper failure to perform an act,” he wrote.

Furthermore, the Justice Department’s handling of the matter appeared to be consistent with the support of the Vice President’s position against oversight that was expressed by the White House counsel, Mr. Jarrett said.

Finally, he suggested, if there are still questions of interpretation of the executive order that remain unresolved, “the ISOO may request an opinion from the Department clarifying the matter.”

The Department’s prior refusal to render such an opinion was the basis of the original complaint.

Noteworthy new reports from the Congressional Research Service that have not been made readily available to the public include these (all pdf).

“Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2007,” updated January 14, 2008.

“The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11,” updated February 8, 2008.

“Defense: FY2008 Authorization and Appropriations,” updated January 23, 2008.

“U.N. Convention Against Torture (CAT): Overview and Application to Interrogation Techniques,” updated January 25, 2008.

“Nonstrategic Nuclear Weapons,” updated January 16, 2008.

“Securing General Aviation,” updated January 24, 2008.

A federal court on Friday issued an injunction (pdf) disabling the internet domain name of Wikileaks.org, the anti-censorship web site devoted to publication of leaks and other unauthorized disclosures of information.

The move followed a complaint by Bank Julius Baer, a Swiss bank, that Wikileaks had published confidential bank records that are protected by law. The offending documents were itemized in a temporary restraining order (pdf) also issued by the court on February 15.

Those documents are whistleblower records that reveal “trust structures allegedly used for tax evasion, asset hiding and money laundering by the ultra rich,” according to Wikileak’s Julian Assange, who protested what he said was an “unconstitutional” blockage of the wikileaks domain name.

Wikileaks is intended to provide “an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking and public analysis,” according to the web site, and its often controversial contents have been mirrored by dozens of other sites around the world, which remain operational.

“Anti-censorship servers operating in foreign jurisdictions have kicked in successfully,” wrote Mr. Assange after the court issued its order, “but ‘wikileaks.org’ has been forcibly deleted from the domain name system.”

Judge Jeffrey S. White of the Northern District of California scheduled a hearing on the matter for February 29.

It is too early to say who has won or lost more in this confrontation. Wikileaks has demonstrated the willingness and the ability to sustain a robust publication capability in defiance of legal authority, though it may have lost its domain name for the foreseeable future. Bank Julius Baer, whom most people would have never heard of, will now be permanently linked in many minds with vague allegations of financial misconduct.

But the disclosure restrictions that wikileaks managed to defeat were not exactly those of a tyrannical government bent on censorship. They were banking secrecy laws that protect ordinary people as well as corporate malefactors. And by providing the occasion for the court’s extraordinary action, Wikileaks has helped set an unfortunate precedent that may make the next court injunction against a public web site that much easier to obtain.

Additional details on the case are available from cryptome.org and wikileak.org (without the “s”). See also the stories at TPM Muckraker, Discourse.net, and Wired Threat Level, among others.

Noteworthy new reports from the Congressional Research Service include the following (all pdf).

“Congressional Oversight and Related Issues Concerning the Prospective Security Agreement Between the United States and Iraq,” February 7, 2008.

“How Large is China’s Economy? Does it Matter?,” February 13, 2008.

“FY2009 Appropriations for State and Local Homeland Security,” February 7, 2008.

“The Emergency Alert System (EAS) and All-Hazard Warnings,” updated January 28, 2008.

A new report (pdf) from the JASON defense science advisory panel examines the feasibility of modeling explosive shocks to naval vessels to assess their vulnerability.

“Underwater mines have long been a major threat to ships. The most probable threats are non-contact explosions, where a high pressure wave is launched towards the ship.”

“During World War II, it was discovered that although such ‘near miss’ explosions do not cause serious hull or superstructure damage, the shock and vibrations associated with the blast nonetheless incapacitate the ship, by knocking out critical components and systems. This discovery led the Navy to implement a rigorous shock hardening test procedure. The shock hardening testing culminates in a Full Ship Shock Trial (FSST), in which an underwater explosive charge is set off near an operational ship, and system and component failures are documented.”

“JASON was asked by the Navy to examine the potential role of Modeling and Simulation for certifying ship hardness, with the potential goal of FSST replacement.”

A copy of the unclassified JASON report was obtained by Secrecy News.

See “Navy Ship Underwater Shock Prediction and Testing Capability Study,” JSR-07-200, October 2007.

Public access to the Reimer Digital Library, which is the largest online collection of U.S. Army doctrinal publications, has been blocked by the Army, which last week moved the collection behind a password-protected firewall.

But today the Federation of American Scientists filed a Freedom of Information Act request (pdf) asking the Army to provide a copy of the entire unclassified Library so that it could be posted on the FAS web site.

The Army move on February 6 marks the latest step in an ongoing withdrawal of government records from the public domain.

“It was a policy decision to put it behind the AKO [Army Knowledge Online] firewall and to restrict public access,” said Don Gough of the system development division at the Army Training Support Center at Fort Eustis, Virginia, which operates the Reimer Digital Library.

The move came as a surprise since only unclassified and non-sensitive records had ever been made available at the Library site.

Isn’t it true, Secrecy News asked, that the only documents that had been accessible to the public were those that had been specifically… “‘Approved for public release,’ yes,” said Mr. Gough, completing our sentence. “I understand your concern,” he added.

The FAS Freedom of Information Act request is intended to reverse the Army action.

“We hope to restore public access to the Reimer Digital Library by obtaining all of its publicly releasable contents and posting that material on our own website,” the FAS request explained. “Furthermore, in order to preserve the status quo, we expect to file regular FOIA requests for updates to the RDL two or three times a month, so that we may add them to our mirror site.”

“Alternatively, if the Army were to restore the prior level of public access to the RDL, that would fulfill this request and make future requests unnecessary,” the FAS request stated.

Among the many thousands of documents that were formerly available to the public on the Reimer Digital Library, two of the latest additions are these.

“The Modular Force” (pdf), Field Manual Interim FMI 3-0.1, January 2008.

“Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and High Yield Explosives Operational Headquarters” (pdf), Field Manual Interim FMI 3-90.10, January 2008.