Wikileaks Publishes $1B of Public Domain Research Reports

laird writes "Wikileaks has released nearly a billion dollars worth of quasi-secret reports commissioned by the United States Congress. The 6,780 reports, current as of this month, comprise over 127,000 pages of material on some of the most contentious issues in the nation, from the U.S. relationship with Israel to abortion legislation. Nearly 2,300 of the reports were updated in the last 12 months, while the oldest report goes back to 1990. The release represents the total output of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) electronically available to Congressional offices. The CRS is Congress's analytical agency and has a budget in excess of $100M per year. Although all CRS reports are legally in the public domain, they are quasi-secret because the CRS, as a matter of policy, makes the reports available only to members of Congress, Congressional committees and select sister agencies such as the GAO. Members of Congress are free to selectively release CRS reports to the public but are only motivated to do so when they feel the results would assist them politically. Universally embarrassing reports are kept quiet."

Comments

Where do I send my donations?

[drdanny_orig]

That's good work, folks. Keep it up.

Sunshine

[TubeSteak]

Unreleased reports are the bane of a modern society.
Unfavorable medical studies get buries, Congressional reports that never see the light of day.
Hopefully this ray of sunshine will shake things up and give everyone something to complain about.

Re:Sunshine

[worthawholebean]

Watergate? If the offense is particularly egregious, getting it out in the open is usually enough to force change.

Re:Sunshine

[Eil]

Your staggering level of cynicism has been duly noted, but it doesn't change the fact that releasing these reports is beneficial for everyone even if every single person doesn't have an explicit interest in them. As a comparison, relatively few people actually ever utilize their 1st Amendment right to say unpopular things, but the fact that the right exists is invaluable.

And yes, I do wonder why studies sponsored by my tax dollars weren't publicly available to begin with.

Re:Sunshine

[TubeSteak]

A lot of people go on about government conspiracies but there is no reason for the government to do anything in secret because it can be done out in the open and most people won't take notice and if they do find out odds are they won't care enough to do anything about it.

Lets start with government conspiracies. Two examples: telecom spying and extraordinary renditions. The first was done secretly, but journalists knew long before they made it public. The second was done out in the open and a small group of private citizens tracked a fleet of secret CIA jets to a variety of international destinations (which proved hugely embarrassing to quite a few intermediate European countries).

Most people don't have to take notice, nor do they have to care enough to do anything about it.
All that matters is that all of the time, some part of the populace cares and is capable of making a good case why "most people" should too.

Saddening

[Seraphim_72]

It is saddening to have to have this "leaked". It should reside at something like www.Government.us/research/ :(

If it embarrasses politicians, it should be leaked

[cabalamat3]

If research embarrasses some politicians, it should be leaked, because it suggests that reality is not in accordance with those politicians' beliefs, and that therefore those politicians may make wrong decisions.

If research embarrasses all the politicians in Congress, it's even more important that it be leaked.

Re:For the .01% of the people who would read it...

[TubeSteak]

For the rest of us, this is more in a long line of public information that we'll never read - more (potentially interesting but lost among the rest) documents are published by the military, various departments, etc, than we could shake a stick at,

Think tanks, research groups, journalists, students, historians and a whole passle of other professions will find this stuff invaluable.

They have always provided a filter between raw material and the general public. I guarantee that these reports will immediately start getting cited in journals and newspaper articles. Best of all, we can read the primary source without having to pay the RAND Corporation or some other think tank $XYZ to get our hands on the document.

Re:The U.S. government is extremely corrupt.

[Anonymous Coward]

The U.S. government is extremely corrupt.

Human beings are extremely corrupt.

There, fixed that for ya.

Kill all humans!

Re:The U.S. government is extremely corrupt.

[mysticgoat]

All governments are corrupt. From nations down to neighborhood associations.

It is the nature of some men and women to seek power over others, and because of this driving need, they are more likely to end up in government positions than other persons who might be more qualified in all kinds of ways, but who are not attracted to power. It is also true that those who are ethically unencumbered are more likely to win the races they enter than anyone who tries to follow the rules. The end result is the old adage I first heard applied to the Chicago political machine of the 1960s:

A government does not have to be good, and rarely is. It only has to be good enough that the populace will tolerate it.

The US Constitution was built with this in mind. Its system of checks and balances are designed to keep the natural corruptive nature of politics reined in by making it very difficult for any one individual or group from obtaining across the board power. I think we could now design a better system, since we know a lot more now, and we have some neat technologies that were not available back in the day. But so long as what we've got is good enough, that's not going to happen.

Wikileaks has just raised the bar by shining light into some murky corners. Back room deals and cover-ups that used to be good enough are not good enough any longer... and that's a big win for the Nation.

Re:The U.S. government is extremely corrupt.

[mpe]

The U.S. government is extremely corrupt.

Corruption is a fairly common attribute of government. Regardless of when and where in human history you look... Power can both corrupt and attract the corrupt/easily corruptable. What's actually more worrying is when people display such great faith that "their government" is immune to or free of corruption.

Would Wikileaks publish a document about itself?

[patro]

Suppose someone sends a list to Wikileaks containing all the names of Wikileaks admins and the people behind it.

Would they publish it, so they can stay true to their values, even if this information could effectively mean the end of Wikileaks?

Re:The U.S. government is extremely corrupt.

[Anonymous Coward]

Those who desire power tend to be the least deserving of it.

available for cost from penny hill

[commodoresloat]

What's more, these documents were apparently already available for a fee from this company. All they're doing is (rightly, imho) making them available for free rather than forcing people to pay a publishing company for access to records that we supposedly already own.

Re:The U.S. government is extremely corrupt.

[LanMan04]

We should draft random people to become politicians.