The public controversy that erupted over NSA bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records was a clear sign, if one were needed, that the boundaries of government secrecy had been drawn incorrectly, and that the public had been wrongly denied an opportunity to grant or withhold its consent in such cases. To remedy this systemic problem, […]
Recent reports from the Congressional Research Service that Congress has withheld from online public distribution include the following. Shadow Banking: Background and Policy Issues, December 31, 2013 Energy-Water Nexus: The Water Sector’s Energy Use, January 3, 2014 Energy-Water Nexus: The Energy Sector’s Water Use, August 30, 2013
By Hans M. Kristensen The former U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff, General Norton Schwartz, confirmed last week that the B61-12 nuclear bomb planned by the Obama administration will have improved military capabilities to attack targets with greater accuracy and less radioactive fallout. The confirmation comes two and a half years after an FAS publication […]
While others speak of curbing intelligence surveillance activities, the Defense Science Board argues in a new report that the U.S. government should expand and accelerate global monitoring for purposes of detecting nuclear proliferation as “a top national security objective.” Intelligence techniques and technologies that are used to combat terrorism should also be harnessed to address […]
The Government Accountability Office will issue a long-awaited report on intelligence community contractors in the next few weeks, a congressional official said. The GAO report is an unclassified version of a classified assessment that was completed last year. According to a statement of work obtained by Secrecy News in 2012, the GAO project was to […]
In a striking new example of secret lawmaking, a classified provision in the consolidated appropriations bill passed by Congress last week prohibited the transfer of CIA drone operations to the Department of Defense. “This is outrageous,” said Sen. John McCain of the secret legislative move, “and it should not have happened.” The secret provision was […]
For more than three years, author Anthony Shaffer has been challenging the government’s contention that hundreds of passages in his Afghanistan memoir “Operation Dark Heart” are classified and should not be publicly disclosed. Now a judge has ordered the full text of the book to be delivered to her in “complete and unredacted” form. DC […]
Updated below The White House yesterday issued Presidential Policy Directive 27 on United States Conventional Arms Transfer Policy. The text of the directive was posted on the White House web site. “The new policy provides greater clarity and transparency with respect to U.S. goals for arms transfers and on the criteria used to make arms […]
The U.S. intelligence community needs to expand the collection and analysis of open source information, according to a Senate Intelligence Committee report on the 2012 attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya. But that recommendation ironically comes just as the CIA has terminated public and scholarly access to its open source collection of foreign news […]
New and updated reports from the Congressional Research Service that Congress has withheld from online public distribution include the following. Marine Corps Drawdown, Force Structure Initiatives, and Roles and Missions: Background and Issues for Congress, January 9, 2014 Border Security: Immigration Inspections at Port of Entry, January 9, 2014 Oil and Chemical Spills: Federal Emergency […]
In a December 2009 memorandum, President Obama directed the newly established National Declassification Center (NDC) to process an estimated 400 million page backlog of historical records at the National Archives “in a manner that will permit public access to all declassified records from this backlog no later than December 31, 2013.” That December 31 deadline […]
New and newly updated reports from the Congressional Research Service that Congress has withheld from online public distribution include the following. National Security Letters in Foreign Intelligence Investigations: Legal Background, January 3, 2014 National Security Letters in Foreign Intelligence Investigations: A Glimpse at the Legal Background, January 3, 2014 Nuclear Power Plant Security and Vulnerabilities, […]