Last year, the Supreme Court refused to hear a case brought by the ACLU against the National Security Agency challenging the constitutionality of the Terrorist Surveillance Program. Sen. Arlen Specter wrote to Judge Sonia Sotomayor this week asking the Supreme Court nominee to be prepared at her confirmation hearing next week to say, among other things, whether she would have favored Supreme Court review of the matter.
The DNI Information Sharing Environment has released its latest annual report (pdf), detailing progress made and challenges remaining in the effort to improve sharing of terrorism-related information among authorized users, which generally does not include members of the public.
The public interest group OMB Watch reviewed the evolving policy on “controlled unclassified information” and offered its own critique in “Controlled Unclassified Information: Recommendations for Information Control Reform” (pdf), July 2009.
Compliance with IAEA nuclear safeguards agreements is mandated in a new Air Force Instruction that also provides useful background on the safeguards process. See “Implementation of the US-International Atomic Energy Agency Integrated Safeguards Agreements” (pdf), Air Force Instruction 16-605, June 23, 2009.
The effectiveness and the unintended consequences of U.S. export control policies were discussed at a hearing of the House Science and Technology Committee. The record of that hearing, with extensive post-hearing questions for the record, has just been published. See “Impacts of U.S. Export Control Policies on Science and Technology Activities and Competitiveness” (pdf), February 25, 2009.
Public comments and recommendations on classification and declassification policies and related matters are being received until July 19 on the White House Office of Science and Technology blog.
This rule gives agencies significantly more authority over certain career policy roles. Whether that authority improves accountability or creates new risks depends almost entirely on how agencies interrupt and apply it.
Our environmental system was built for 1970s-era pollution control, but today it needs stable, integrated, multi-level governance that can make tradeoffs, share and use evidence, and deliver infrastructure while demonstrating that improved trust and participation are essential to future progress.
Durable and legitimate climate action requires a government capable of clearly weighting, explaining, and managing cost tradeoffs to the widest away of audiences, which in turn requires strong technocratic competency.
FAS is launching the Center for Regulatory Ingenuity (CRI) to build a new, transpartisan vision of government that works – that has the capacity to achieve ambitious goals while adeptly responding to people’s basic needs.