Slashdot Mirror
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."
That's good work, folks. Keep it up.
.nosig
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.
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.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The U.S. government is extremely corrupt.
Human beings are extremely corrupt.
There, fixed that for ya.
Kill all humans!
Those who desire power tend to be the least deserving of it.
We should draft random people to become politicians.
With the first link, the chain is forged.