Libraries Asked To Destroy Reports, Databases

unix guy writes: "Our good friends and protectors in the U.S. Gov't have decided that what we used to know we can't know any longer. This LA Times story talks about libraries being ordered to destroy existing government reports and data sources in the name of homeland security." Is it really a fair trade to give up readily-available information about "airports, water treatment plants, nuclear reactors and more"?

Comments

This is absurd.

[trilucid]

If the damned terrorists want to know all about our nation's infrastructure, the information is readily available in A LOT OF PLACES, not all under government control. The ways of getting at such data are simply innumerable.

This is wrong, and yes, I'm going to mention 1984 here. How much closer do we have to get? The government is, in effect if not by intent, enforcing the concept of revisionist history. I don't pretend to understand how to deal with our current problems (here in the U.S.), but this isn't the way.

Maybe it's time to really step up efforts to archive data in places out of the reach of such efforts. Data warehousing might be what saves us in the future from this sort of insanity. Yes, it would have to have significant funding to work, but that funding could come from anywhere, anonymously if necessary. I for one would contribute.

Of course, even given that, the government would no doubt make accessible such digital troves illegal at some point, potentially classifying the very action of such access as "terrorist in nature".

Nobody is going to tell me I can't access public domain information and knowledge. No matter what, people will find a way. Sorry about the rambling here, this just pisses me off.

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Yes, this is my protest to the sig char limit :).

Re:This is absurd.

[gilroy]

This is so absurd that I'm sure I'll be "redundant" before I get to hit Submit, but...

There are only one reason terrorists haven't detonated an atomic bomb and that is that they don't know how to do it.

Wow, are you dumb. The knowledge on "how" has been widely available for decades. It takes a not-too-sophisticated knowledge of some simple physics. Heck, some university graduate programs assign the shielding calculations, etc., as questions on their qualifying exams!

What is hard to do, and generally denied to terrorists, is the laborious process of amassing enough fissionable material to make the bomb work. That is not an information thing -- the materials are themselves rare, expensive, and tough to produce. In fact, the best way to combat the true threat of nuclear terrorism is to educate the public about what steps must be taken to keep that material in safe hands. Knowing more, not knowing less, serves the interest of public safety.

I can't wait until Ashcroft's thought police break down the door to my classroom because I dare to teach the principle of relativity and quantum mechanics that make nukes possible.

This has been going on for *years*...

[Ed Bailey]

Way back about 20 years ago when I was entering the World of Work(tm) I worked at a university, in their data center. A prof was doing research on the state of bridges in Connecticut (there had been a recent high-profile bridge failure in the state).

Anyway, he got a data tape from either the state or federal government (I don't recall which) of a bunch of bridge-related information. It was my job to pull the data from the tape, and do some initial checking to make sure we read the data correctly. In order to make sure everything looked OK, the tape came with a record definition, showing each field in the record, its size, and the type of data it contained.

The interesting thing was that two fields were listed in the record definition, but were zero'ed out on the tape -- the latitude and longitude of each bridge. It turned out that the agency responsible for the data would not release that one datum; the concern was that the data could be militarily significant in time of war.

So making data harder to find in the name of homeland security is nothing all that new...

Ed

Re:The Constitution is not a suicide pact!

[J'raxis]

When the government publishes information, it is nearly always published as public domain information this means that the information becomes public knowledge, available to everyone, etc., etc. When they published their information, they had their say, and they chose a license, public domain, that is essentially irrevocable.

Take for example, The CIA World Factbook, essentially a full-fledged atlas/almanac published by the CIA, yearly. See the copyright notice on the publication:

The Factbook is in the public domain. Accordingly, it may be copied freely without permission of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Seen this before...

[Eddie the Jedi]

Looks like the Gubmint is stealing another page from the old Soviet Union playbook. Begining with Stalin's regime (or possibly even Lenin's), an important part of the USSR's defense against invaders was that accurate maps were considered state secrets. All published maps were intentionally made inaccurate—by changing the locations of roads, towns, landmarks, etc., or adding new ones where none actually existed.

Time for me to go dig up that old 'Ask Slashdot' article about which country now most deserves the title "Land of the Free."

"Information at your fingertips"

[Dr. Nonsense]

Govt printing office access site

Find your local Federal Depository - the 1,350 libraries that they are asking (telling? ordering?) to destroy documents.

Go talk to the librarians, ask their opinions, voice your opinion, read some documents, see how or if they are actually disposing of them, etc.
I wonder how long it is before we can no longer access this list.

Re:The Constitution is not a suicide pact!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Constitution does not, anywhere, guarantee "freedom of information."

Sure it does:

Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

This is part of a scary trend

[D. J. Keenan]

The actions describe by the LA Times are part of a scary trend. The Economist has a series of stories about how rights are being lost in the name of terrorism fighting. In the US, over 1000 people are being detained incommunicado, sometimes subject to mistreatment. Another story (this not free) describes how some terrorism trials will now be conducted in secret and need not prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. In the UK, the Home Secretary has warned judges not to apply the Human Rights Act. And mobile-phone calls are now logged, which forces terrorists to use only pre-paid phones (wow).

Likely the cowed populace will ask for even more disenfranchisements.

Re:The thing is...

[Dirtside]

If the Constition says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."--that's pretty self-explanatory. Congress shouldn't pass any laws regarding religions or churches whatsoever; it can pass no laws which restrict speech or writing; it can pass no law to prevent people from peacefully assembling. What's there to interpret?

What's there to interpret? How about the following question: "What constitutes speech?"

The 1st Amendment only specifically mentions "speech" and "the press". What do they mean by "the press"? The freedom of the news media to publish what it likes? Or the freedom of individuals to use a printing press? Or the concept of physical publication and distribution? Or all of these? Or none of these? "The press" is *AMBIGUOUS*, and leaves us with no choice BUT to interpret.

So let's say you read the 1st Amendment completely literally. The only things that are guaranteed protection are the freedom to speak aloud, and the freedom to write, print, and distribute whatever you like. What about... artwork? If I create a piece of art that shows a caricatured black man with big lips and beady eyes supplicating before a regal white master, is that protected by the First Amendment? After all, I did not write anything, and I did not say anything.

But clearly it would be ludicrous to prohibit the expression of whatever it is that I'd be trying to express with that artwork. Yet the 1st Amendment says nothing about artwork. Now what?

Other things that are not explicitly mentioned in the 1st Amendment, but it would be (in my opinion) wrong to not consider protected: computer source code, any form of electronically stored data, sign language, rude hand gestures, facial expressions (for example, glaring at someone)... hey, how about THOUGHT? Thought isn't mentioned or even referenced by the 1st Amendment. Therefore we can prohibit certain kinds of thought, right?

My point here is that your position is untenable -- language almost by definition is ambiguous, and without something to concretely resolve that ambiguity, we are left with literally no choice but to interpret the language and figure out what it means. Unless, of course, you think that none of the above things I mentioned should be protected? Not that there's anything wrong with that -- you're entitled to your opinions, another side effect of the First Amendment.