Slashdot Mirror
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"?
Tom Ridge also has a history of denying information to his citizens. As the former governor of PA, he made it illegal to have cellular phone programming information if you were not directly related to a cellular company, whether a seller of phones, repair shop, etc. The Black Crawling Systems BBS archives formerly for sale by l0pht could not be sent to PA because of my wonderful unconstitutional legislature and governor. I fear what else Tom Ridge will try to take away.
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
About two years ago, I became really interested in urban exploration (exploring storm drain tunnels, etc). While I never actually went down in a drain (maybe some day), I remember going to city hall and spending some 5 bucks for gigantic plotted maps of the city storm drain and sewer system. The guy behind the counter in the engineering department gave me a few weird looks as to why I would need these maps and information, but legally he had to do so for various reasons, one of them being that I'm paying for these systems to be maintained with my tax dollars, I have a right to know about them. I think some of the more libral libraries might still give out this information, I have a hard time believing any library taking the US gov't seriously about this.
NerfOnline - Because Nerf Guns aren't just for kids -
At the end of this path is a society in which a few, carefully screened individuals have all the knowledge and the rest of the population lives in ignorance. In fact, throughout history, we have had societies like that. The "knowledge elite", of course, derives lots of power and wealth from their knowledge and soon dispenses with the need to consider input from the masses, who don't know what's going on anyway.
It is up to us in a democratic society to decide how far we want to go down that path. At least we still have the choice for now--once we are too far down that path, democracy inevitably disappears, since you can't make informed political decisions if you don't have information.
The thing is, the terrorists already have all the documents they need. When we raided Saddam's nuclear program during the Gulf "conflict" (not much of a war, really, and no formal declaration then as now, which I find stupid), we found declassified documents gotten from the U.S. government printing office for a modest fee, from the early days of our nuclear program. We also found them being put into practice--we found 1940s era (in terms of the tech) cyclotrons being used to make fissionable uranium. We hadn't thought this possible before because the technology can only produce minuscule quantities of the right uranium isotope, so we wrote it off as impractical and declassified the design schemtics and all for the cyclotrons we'd tried with in the early days. Turns out Saddam was more patient than we are.
Such documents have been available for years. Terrorists already have them. They are already on the Internet. Closing the barn door after the horse is gone is needless. We just need to keep from declassifying anything else that ought not to be. Problem is, the three-letter agencies never want to declassify anything, and that would be even worse than declassifying dangerous infrastructure or nuclear information. I don't want terrorists attacking my country. But if my country becomes any more backwards and secretive than the Star Chamber it's already fast becoming, then I wouldn't mind so much if the whole thing gets destroyed and we have to start from the fundamentals again. I believe it was Jefferson who advocated periodic revolutions, to remove the "cruft" that accrues around any government.
In two centuries, we've gone from isolationist "paradise" happy to revel in our beautiful countrysides and stay out of world conflicts for our own good, to the Roman Empire of the modern world. I'm not one of these assholes who whines about how America deserves what it gets--certainly innocent people just going about their daily lives don't deserve to die--but frankly I'm not surprised nor dismayed, either. I don't really like my government. It did worse things than pulling easy-to-get-elsewhere data from libraries, even before Sept. 11. While I lament the deaths of the innocent, part of me hopes our government keeps baring its true fangs until everyone sees what it is and gets fed up with the cruft and corruption. Our government taxes us to death to do worthless things like give 2 BILLION dollars of aid ech year to Egypt, which hates us, hundreds of millions each year to Afghanistan, whose government sponsored terrorism against us, and BILLIONS to several other countries which almost all Americans couldn't care less about. Why should it be the responsibility of a teacher making near-poverty wages to subsidize third-world regimes? That's practically communism. After all, "to share everything and be poor together is madness." Why do we do it? The stock answer, political stability. The real answer, to subsidize regimes that are favorable to U.S. corporate interests, so that people who would cut off U.S. trade don't get into power.
That's what it's all about in the end. Take from the average working class citizen to subsidize corporations, corporations which get tax breaks to "stimulate the economy" (read: get companies to make more stuff and get people to buy more stuff, whether the stuff is necessary or not). The rest of the world objects to so much American stuff floating around and destabilizing their own native industries--and I can't blame them for that; I can sympathize since corporate America's stuff also destabilizes native industries here in America (average citizens can't compete with the Wal-Marts; we all become employees whereas in the old days many, many more of us would be owners, and could work towards being owners). In turn America is hated and attacked, though unfortunately foreign terrorists don't want to make the distinction between American citizens and the government which lords it over them. In turn the government acts even more repressive. The question is if and when we will reach the breaking point, where pressure leads to a breakdown in the economic and social structure. I have to say, I hope so. It would give us a chance we won't have otherwise to return to the core fundamentals of the Constitution, shedding all the strained and bogus interpretations and omissions which have been imposed in the intervening years--such as the fact that the Tenth Amendment is entirely ignored.
There are so many parallels between the U.S. and the Roman Empire--our history and development run along the same lines. Agrarian Republic to world-shaking Empire. True Republic to puppet government controlled almost exclusively by the elites. A country which avoids warfare once it consolidats itself and expands to its natural boundaries, to an Empire which thrives on warfare to promote economic interests.
This has digressed from the small topic of restricting information to the larger issues which have spawned such restriction. But it is undoubtedly an action which is a thread in this larger tapestry. We really ought to examine proactively the reasons behind our government's actions, rather than reacting to them one by one. This is the problem the media has--they promote dwelling on the small issues, while ignoring the bigger picture because it won't fit into a 90-second segment. We really need to examine these themes when incidents arise, instead of treating each as if it existed in a vacuum.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
What about people who have some of this information memorized. Should they be destroyed as well?
It kind of makes me want get the information and put it up on web server located in switzerland.
I was just trying to convey the feeling I have about the people who are making these decisions. On a grand scale, I DO believe that information should be always available. I also believe that these measures should be temporary.
/. seems to view issues in absolutes; all information should be available, government and corporations are always bad, open source is the best, etc. But in real life there are mitigating circumstances that make the absolute right thing wrong. You want full info flow- give out the plans to nuke bombs, your companies network architecture, the PIN # of your ATM card. Yes, these are absurd and taken to the extreme, but your interpretation of what is the proper level of info flow may differ from the next person's. Who is to say what info you want released is right, rather than what your neighbor wants released?
I wanted to point out that
To bring it together, there are people who believe that the level of info out there is too much. You may disagree, but I may disagree about what you want to keep private.
Hope this helps clarify my position.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
is sufficiently cloudy on access to information about airports, nuclear reactors and power stations. I see "freedom of speech" in there, but I don't see "freedom of access to information" present. I don't see how "Speech = access to info". Perhaps you could enlighten me.
But we do have something called the Freedom of Information Act. This requires the government to make non-classified information public. There are only a few exceptions to this, including the internal operations of agencies, personal memos, law enforcement, and this little piece:
(1)(A) specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy and (B) are in fact properly classified pursuant to such Executive order;
Now, IANAL, but it would seem like the government is breaking the law. As far as I know, there has been no Executive Order (re)classifying this information.
There is another question: can previously unclassified information be classified? Is this similar to trade secrets where, once its made public, its no longer subject to trade secret protections.
I'm with you.
You can apply this to antrax versus the flu.
Or flying/driving.
Security is a myth... anyone who understand security understands it's a sliding scale with decreasing means of return.
I've always viewed security vesus effort as the comparision between a bell-curve and a expotential curve. The amount of effort you expend with increasing security increases expotnentialy. The amount of increased security you get is like a bell curve... at some point you are getting the maximum amount of security per effort... as you move beyond that point, the amount of extra security you can get starts to drop off, while effort goes way up. The last 1% of security takes a nearly infinite amount of effot.
Effort = laws... or whatever means you have.
The point I'm trying to make is you can only be so safe. The Bill of Rights means you are free, but you accept some things with those freedoms, like everyone else is free too. And at any moment someone may lose it and start shooting... but you accept that... the problem is, most people don't get it.
I want my freedom. I am a midwestern. I was raised with guns. I'm a hell of a shot. I was raised with cows & corn. I damn well know food doesn't come from the grocery store, but I've met people that didn't beef comes from cows.
I know that if the shit hits the fan, I can defend myself. I can get milk, eggs, butter, corn, turkey, deer... and I know friends with siterns and windmill pumped wells that still work. The have pot bellies stoves that work with wood so you can cook a meal.
Point blank: if the it all went to hell tomorrow, I could be free AND alive. And I want to be free.
I think that the current state of being has made people week and afraid of freedoms.
I am not afraid. I want to be free.
I think most people are afraid... and they don't know how to survive.
I think survively and freedom (or wanting to free) go hand in hand.
I've thought about it a lot. I want a certain level of protection from the govt... that's the very premise of govt. But there is a line. And people don't get it. People don't see the line.
Sigh. I don't know.
I'm ranting. Please move on.
Maybe because I'm studying Civil Engineering, moron.
But more to the point, it's because the government has NO FUCKING BUSINESS telling me what I can and cannot read, write, say, or publish, nor may they dictate how or to whom I may pray, nor may they tell me what groups I may join. The government is EXPLICITLY FORBIDDEN to do any of these things, and if it does so it has surrendered any claim of legitimacy it may have.
Detailed knowledge? Hardly. All you need is to read a college level physics textbook, or even apply a little common sense. In theory, the ideal place to hit it would at the base, where the stress is the greatest; however, this is also where the structure is the strongest, so you run the risk of not damaging the structure sufficiently to cause a catastrophic failure if you fail to hit it hard enough. Therefore, you probably want to hit the structure at it's thinnest point (top center) and try for a progressive failure -- make a small hole, and hope that the force of the water rushing out gradually causes more of the structure to fail. [actually the BEST way to burst a big dam is to burst a smaller one upstream]
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Congress did NOT pass a law abridging free speech in this case.
Apparently, the materials are ON LOAN from the government to these "depository libraries". The government owns these materials. It can do what it wants with them. Having the librarian destroy them just saved the cost of shipping them back so the govt. could destroy them. Perhaps it would have made less waves if they had shipped them back and destroyed them themselves.
So, if you want to hire a bunch of guys, do a survey of all the water systems in the US and then publish it, go ahead. If the government then refuses to allow you to publish, then you have a 1st ammendment case.
As representatives of the people, the government determined that the people desired this information only to the extent that it would not jeopardize our lives.
You can hardly argue that the government fails to represent The People in this case. The vast majority would agree that we are better off without uncontrolled access to this information.
There is a fine line that must be walked. Take away too much information, and we end up with Chernobyl--a classic example of what happens without an informed, active environmental lobby. Give out too much information and we end up with terrorists knowing where the Cole is docked and just where to ram it.
The fact that we are having this argument on /. and in the media is encouraging. When people are afraid to dialog like this; afraid to be controversial, that's when I'll be afraid.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Reporter's blather in article, supported by quoting various hysterical people (or, probably, selecting only their most hysterical-sounding quotes): the usual assumptions that this is a mere first step in an inevitable long march designed to lock the American people into perpetual ignorance.
Relevant factoid: the Bush administration started by canning Clinton's last-minute imposition of higher restrictions on arsenic levels in water at the national level; claimed it needed time to carefully review the issue before codifying such an imposition; took tons of flak from Democrats and "greens" for "increasing levels of arsenic in our nation's water supply"; waited until after the 2001-09-11 attacks (about last week, I think) to quietly restore the Clinton restriction, with little fanfare or applause from Democrats/greens as far as I could see (especially compared with news coverage of the issue earlier this year).
Does this suggest the Bush administration is using the 09-11 attack to effect environmental protection under the cover of darkness? I think not; rather, I would hope that, after review, the decision turned out to be sound.
Implication: taking careful stock of sensitive information in public view and selectively having some copies of it, especially convenientally accessible copies, rendered inaccessible (e.g. take info off web, destroy a few CD-ROMs) until further review and/or security can be implemented seems not only wise, but consistent with other things this Administration has done, even if some of those things are out of step with the far-right, pro-business agenda with which its critics charge it.
Sad fact: this action is too-often compared with the DMCA, the SSSCA, copy protection, and so on, but the most important message we can send to our government today is, YES, you have a duty to carefully consider which public information should be conveniently accessible (and we'll help you make those sorts of decisions), but you should get the heck out of the business of allowing or sponsoring censorship solely to prop up failing business models being employed by corporate America.
The reason that's a "sad fact" is that the latter specific message is going to be swamped by the vastly-easier-to-flyswat general version that says "any form of censorship is evil", even when it amounts to merely making certain convenient collections of data less trivial to access remotely, even when it is clearly necessary, at least in the short term, for national-defense purposes.
Think about it folks: Jack Valenti is now being enlisted as a friend in defense of this nation against terrorists, to encourage the movie industry to support the war effort a la WWII, etc. As such, he (or, more precisely, his support of what amounts to legalized terror waged against those who share info on, e.g., how to view DVDs on "hacker OSes" like GNU/Linux) cannot simply be broad-brushed as "evil" when most Americans are more concerned about true terrorism than complete freedom to view DVDs.
So "we" have to be much more incisive in the way we simultaneously oppose arbitrary restrictions on the free flow of information among peers and yet support the choice of people to unite to form a common defense against external attack.
Knee-jerk ranting against practical national-defense measures, especially done just to make Bush and/or Republicans look bad, won't get the job done -- it'll actually make things worse (we'll lose more civil liberties, lose the war against global terrorism, or perhaps both).
(Note that if you really don't support any form of censorship, even defense, then go ahead and make that argument as you see fit. I happen to think most people who think all forms of censorship are equally evil haven't really thought the issues through carefully or at least considered which battles are worth fighting today. Even "extremists" like RMS and the FSF finally chose to "censor", or limit, access to their systems -- their information, if you will -- after some 20 years of being, practically, password-free. Even the purest possible spokesman against all forms of censorship might tend to lose his powers of persuasion after being taken out by a suitcase nuke! So please realize that freedoms and rights are abstract concepts, made practical by adhering to them as much as possible, and no further than that.)
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
Who was it that said when all you have is a hammer, it's tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail?
.. at least I haven't been pulled over for not showing a flag ..
That's the mentality I see running the show inside the Beltway these days. When we need smarter security, we get dumb ideas like this -- and this one is worse than useless, because it makes people feel safer without actually providing any protection.
That's the upside of it. The downside is that now anyone worried that someone is going to find evidence of their scam, or screwup, in our Federal Depository Libraries can get that evidence destroyed under the watchful eyes of U.S. Marshals and not only can we not stop it, most of us won't even know when it happens.
Oh well
73 de N5VB (ex-KD5BIV) AR SK