Or maybe European when they develop a manned space craft, but I’m not doing NASA.
Why, do you ask, am I down on NASA?
Because they had a virus infestation on the laptop computers on the space station, and because the virus spread around via a contaminated USB “thumb” drive because no one thought to turn off autorun on the computers.
Jeebus.
In their never ending quest to avoid public scrutiny, Bush and His Evil Minions™ have introduced a new form of restricted information, Controlled Unclassified information.
Basically, the goal here is not to protect information from enemies, but to keep it from the public, and particularly FOIA requests.
The more I learn about government classification, the more that I think that we need to enshrine the Swedish concept of Offentlighetsprincipen (Openness) in our constitution.
Basically, it says that all government documents are open, except those covered by the following, and only by the following:
This list are the only reason, and, “Secrecy is limited to a maximum time of 70 years (when relating to individuals that is 70 years after the person’s death).”
Given the tradition of secret government in the US over the past 60 years, I think that the list in the US should be more restrictive, as we have a long tradition of bureaucratic figleafs to keep the American people in the dark.
It looks like BAE Systems may have been lax with its oversight of classified materials on the JSF program.
Of more concern appears to be that the Defense Security Service, which is supposed to supervise defense contractors, did not do it’s job well.
In fact it barely did its job at all.
The trial of Thomas Kontogiannis, the money man/money launderer of the Duke Cunningham scandal, appears under some sort of government blackout.
The government is saying that the details of the case, which are normally public record, are government secrets, because the government says so.
So very little of the plea has been revealed.
Given the history of the state secrets privilege, it was created in the 1950s, and the US government lied to the court in the case establishing the precedent, United States v. Reynolds, I’m inclined to think that this is more Bush DoJ shenanigans.
They are probably covering up for other corrupt Republicans, Rep. Lewis comes to mind.
Well, I assume that most of you know that England’s Prince Harry, 3rd in line to the throne, was serving secretly in Afghanistan, and that his cover was blown by Drudge.
Must be something with conservative media. They just love to break confidences for no good reason to put brave people in danger, like Plame and Novak.
He is now claiming that he did not have effective counsel, because his lawyers could not fully brief him on the case, because of secrecy rules.
I don’t think that Mossaoui was the “20th Hijacker”. I think that he was a terrorist wannabee, and I think that he should be locked up for some time, though I’m not sure if that’s in a prison or a high security mental ward, but the fact that Bush and His Evil Minions™ screwed up this case just stuns me.
These guys could not organize themselves out of a wet paper bag.
An update on my earlier post on the state secrets privilige.
Well now the Senate Judiciary Committee is working on actual legislation requiring that the Judge be given evidence of an actual proof of a state secret before granting such a motion.
The states secret privilege has been abused for many years, and in fact the original case establishing the privilege, United States v. Reynolds, was an abuse of the privilege, as it was revealed there were no secrets involved.
The folks at FAS have an interesting post on the House Judiciary committee reviewing abuses of the state secrets privilige.
Basically, it’s the wide latitude that courts give the executive to claim that something is too secret for them to be sued, you know, things like torture, kickbacks, and other forms of corruption.
Lots of meaty stuff there.