We invite you to help sustain Secrecy News and the work of the FAS Project on Government Secrecy by making a tax-deductible contribution to the Federation of American Scientists.
Last week, the Congressional Research Service issued a report about “The Arsenal Act,” a peculiar and little-known law dating back to 1854 that authorizes the Secretary of the Army to “abolish any United States arsenal that he considers unnecessary.” If you wanted to read that report you could purchase a copy for $29.95 from a commercial vendor. Or you could write to your Congressman to request that a copy be sent to you. Or you could simply read the report right now for free on the Federation of American Scientists web site.
We do not charge anyone for access to this or thousands of other valuable, hard-to-find government records that are highlighted in nearly every issue of Secrecy News. The whole point of our work is to make such records more easily available.
But we do incur costs in gathering and publishing the records. We also invest time and resources in probing the boundaries of the national security secrecy system and reporting our findings to the interested public. We engage in advocacy to promote a real, measurable reduction in the scope of secrecy through the Fundamental Classification Guidance Review and other mechanisms. And we assist reporters and researchers dealing with questions of access to government information.
If you derive any benefit from these activities, please help us to maintain and expand them. Donations can be made online here (specify that your donation should be directed to “government secrecy”). If contributing via Paypal, send us a separate email to let us know you want your contribution allocated to the FAS Project on Government Secrecy. Checks payable to FAS may also be mailed to:
Secrecy News
Federation of American Scientists
1725 DeSales Street N.W.
6th Floor
Washington D.C. 20036
Cities and states are best positioned to design policies to accelerate clean energy, innovation, and economic development because they can design approaches that work in different social, political, and economic contexts.
Outcome-Based Contracting reframes procurement around the staged achievement of measurable mission outcomes rather than the delivery of predefined technical artifacts.
The real opportunity of AI lies not just in the tools, but in an educator workforce prepared to wield them. When done right, this investment in human infrastructure ensures AI accelerates learning outcomes for all students, closing the “digital design divide.”
If carbon markets are going to play a meaningful role — whether as engines of transition finance, as instruments of accurate pricing across heterogeneous climate interventions, or both — they need the infrastructure and standards that any serious market requires.