Slashdot Mirror
Privatization Limiting Access To Information
Knutsi sends us to the Federation of American Scientists' blog Secrecy News for a post on how privatization can affect access to research material. The blog tells how a Harvard researcher on the history of nuclear secrecy was denied access that would have been granted in the past. Some followup is in the comments to this reposting of the FAS story. "Los Alamos National Laboratory will no longer permit historians and other researchers to have access to its archival records because Los Alamos National Security (LANS), the private contractor that now operates the Lab, says it has 'no policy in place' that would allow such access."
duh.... Don't you know the whole purpose of the privitization of government is to end-around the constitution?
In my case I can no longer access the former research library of my own institution, now stored in a public/governmental one. Anything older than 150 years ago, since a few years back, is in a restricted area with no access, even to researchers. Only librarians with white Mickey Mouse cotton gloves may touch the books... I said I can use that too, just to copy some paragraphs.No, that would be too time consuming as they were not allowed to let me sit there for so long time... And photocopying is a no-no too. Catch22. Fortunately, we had some money over and invited the head librarian to coffee. Suddenly, Sesame. Sick.
DAFIF was a free listing of every aviation facility on the planet: runways, airports, navaids, beacons. One day the US NGIA who compiles it pulled the plug on public access. They said some 'foreign content providers' had claimed copyright on their portion of the data. Instead of distributing a partial worldwide database (which would be kind of useless), they thought "screw it" and dropped public access. Not just US citizens lost out on this, but the whole world did.
Who did this affect? Everyone in Aviation.
So who was behind it? They wouldn't say at the time.
Turns out it was these little greasers: Air Services Australia. They did it because they wanted to rip off Australian Aviators, and they couldn't do that while the US made available an aviation database for free. This is one of these government organizations which pretends to 'privatize'. You get these pompous, stuffed-shirt public servants who think they built an organization from the ground up, when they were really handed something build from public money and said 'charge everyone'. So, Air Services Australia: Thanks a lot.
http://www.fcw.com/article91698-12-12-05-Prin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAFIF
http://www.airservicesaustralia.com/
Under the USC government doesn't copyright their products: citizens already paid to produce it with their taxes. In Australia and Britain, there is a long tradition of fleecing the public.
I work as a government contractor in a similar situation. All I can say is that "we" as contractors don't have any data. The data is still the government's, and we do whatever they say to do with it. I suspect what is going on here is that the guys overseeing the contract itself are ducking and not doing their jobs, as it is easier just to say the government doesn't have control over the data anymore. Fact is, the government still has the obligation to manage the data, they are just lazy and are putting their jobs off on the contractor.
It is not possible for the government to contract out government policy, as hard as they may try.
From what I understand, the problem isn't getting U-235 to go boom, it's getting U-235.
You're quite literally sorting atom-by-atom, putting the U-238 in one bucket and the U-235 in the other, a 2% sort-by-weight problem. But really it's even worse than that, because one always hears about Uranium hexa-Fluoride, so it isn't 235 vs 238, you have to add 54 to each. That changes a 2.1% weight difference into a 1.7% difference. That's why they talk about thousands of centrifuges for refining.
So from what I understand, some sort of nuclear bomb really isn't hard, given the material. Of course making a *small* bomb really IS hard, as is getting the fissile material.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
You have a public, government lab that was turned over to a private, corporate entity. That is the definition of privatization.
Libertarians like to think that eliminating government agencies and turning them all over to private corporations will magically make those businesses more efficient and cost less money. That has often been shown not to be true, but Libertarians still believe it on faith.
I'm sorry, but the Libertarian efficiency dogma is not always true. And in some cases like this, it has the side effect of making the agencies worse.