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."

Comments

Re:If research is or was

[OnlineAlias]

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.