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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 ]
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
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.
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"?
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