In discussing the Vice President’s declassification authority yesterday, we should have noted that some categories of information are protected by statute, not just by executive order. Such information, including intelligence sources and methods that are protected by the National Security Act, cannot simply be declassified by presidential (or vice presidential) fiat.
The point was made in “The White House’s maestro of secrets,” Roanoke Times, February 17.
The AIPAC case, involving the use of the Espionage Act to prosecute the receipt (and not merely the disclosure) of classified information, was viewed from Israel in “Washington: Lobbying for freedom of speech” by Nathan Guttman, Jerusalem Post, February 16.
“Criticism rained down on Vice President Dick Cheney this week for failing to disclose his hunting accident to the public for a day, but advocates of open government said the episode was nothing new. For five years, they said, Cheney has led the Bush administration’s efforts to curtail the flow of government information.”
See “Activists assert secrecy is Cheney’s hallmark” by Charlie Savage, Boston Globe, February 17.
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.
Good information sources, like collections, must be available and maintained if companies are going to successfully implement the vision of AI for science expressed by their marketing and executives.
Let’s see what rules we can rewrite and beliefs we can reset: a few digital service sacred cows are long overdue to be put out to pasture.
Nestled in the cuts and investments of interest to the S&T community is a more complex story of how the administration is approaching the practice of science diplomacy.