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

Is it really a problem though?

[Hal_Porter]

LANL does work on weapons. It seems like erring on the side of not giving out information will inconvenience some researchers but it might be a good thing for everyone else. And as someone pointed out, most of this information needed Q clearance even before privatization, which most researchers don't have, so the number of people inconvenienced is rather small.

Given the rumours of spies from China getting hold of US secrets like the design of the W88 warhead from LANL, maybe less access is a good thing. Seems to me that now that nuclear weapons tests are rare, it will be hard for other countries to make small warheads like this other than by copying an existing design. So stopping any information coming out of LANL is in the interest of the US.

Re:If research is or was

[Stile 65]

Libertarians wouldn't call this privatization, either. This is still government-funded research done by government contractors. Libertarians would call this "corporate welfare."