“Evidently $30 million and 10 years wasn’t enough to finish the job of declassifying records on the involvement of U.S. intelligence agencies with Nazi and Japanese war criminals,” writes Jeff Stein in CQ Spy Talk. “Congress has just budgeted another $650,000 to finish the job — really, they’re serious this time — of poring through some 8 million postwar pages.” See “The Really Longest War: U.S. Still Spending on Nazi War Docs,” March 3.
“The Navy has classified regular reports about the material condition of its fleet, an about-face from when the reports were accessible as public documents under the Freedom of Information Act,” reports Philip Ewing in Navy Times. See “Navy Classifies Ship Inspection Reports,” February 27.
“The Association of Health Care Journalists has urged President Barack Obama to end inherited policies that require public affairs officers to approve journalists’ interviews with federal staff.”
“The military is investigating how a secret briefing about national security got posted on the Web, including information about 93 tunnels found along the nation’s borders and a warning that Canada could become a terrorist gateway,” wrote Pam Zubeck in the Colorado Springs Gazette. See “Military probes how secret briefing wound up on Web,” February 28.
Every new institution inherits something – existing incentives, existing staff, decades of prior investment that shaped what’s possible.
This is not the first time Google has agreed to censor imagery at the behest of governments, but be warned: obfuscation at this broad level poses a direct threat to the public’s ability to monitor and scrutinize government operations.
America’s affordability problem is bigger than home prices and rents. The best housing policies make it easier to build homes, and recognize how housing connects to other domains.
America’s affordability problem, for instance, is bigger than home prices and rents. How we build affects household costs like insurance and utilities.