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."
Just a note, the (C) in CRS stands for "Congressional". It operates under legislation, not executive order, so changing its policies requires a little more than changing who is president.
For the .01% of the people who would actually read stuff like this, this is fantastic. It's important that the public has access to this, and a shame that no suitable politician has decided to request all the reports and publish the whole lot (is there any reason this is not the case? Contact your representatives!).
The original article states that politicians are only motivated to release information that potentially helps them politically. There is very likely to be information which would be politically dangerous. e.g. information lobby groups do not want know. Anyway what's to say it wasn't a politician who gave the information to Wikileaks?
Now that you skimmed some reports, you can judge that they were harmless, and claim it's "pointless" to release them. Hindsight is 20/20, right?
I skimmed some too, and found them similarly dry, but had exactly the opposite reaction. I am upset that they have not been released earlier. $1,000,000,000 of taxpayers' money went to producing these reports. We paid for them and if they are not a matter of national security (in which case they should be classified), then we should have access to them.
If democracy is going to work, voters need as much information as possible when deciding whether or not to replace their leaders come election time. Therefore, open access to harmless material should be the rule, not the exception. Closed access should be used only when absolutely necessary. Anything else makes it too easy for bad leaders (incompetent or otherwise) to cover their tracks and maintain power undeservedly.