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FBI's Secret Interrogation Manual: Now At the Library of Congress

Posted by timothy on from the closed-stacks-though dept.

McGruber writes "The FBI Supervisory Special Agent who authored the FBI's interrogation manual submitted the document for copyright protection — in the process, making it available to anyone with a card for the Library of Congress to read. The story is particularly mind-boggling for two reasons. First, the American Civil Liberties Union fought a legal battle with the FBI over access to the document. When the FBI relented and released a copy to the ACLU, it was heavily redacted — unlike the 70-plus page version of the manual available from the Library of Congress. Second, the manual cannot even qualify for a copyright because it is a government work. Anything 'prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties' is not subject to copyright in the United States."

3 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. Key paragraph by cold+fjord · · Score: 5, Funny

    "A document that has not been released does not even need a copyright," says Steven Aftergood, a government secrecy expert at the Federation of American Scientists. "Who is going to plagiarize from it? Even if you wanted to, you couldn't violate the copyright because you don't have the document. It isn't available."

    "The whole thing is a comedy of errors," he adds. "It sounds like gross incompetence and ignorance."

    It's genius, all the way down.

    --
    much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    1. Re:Key paragraph by DexterIsADog · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How about some other type "collateral damage" inflicted by the incompetence of the United States government and its allies? How about if you watched a hellfire missile destroy your daughter's or son's wedding party? Or you were the groom and survived the attack that ripped your bride apart, literally limb from limb? And the U.S. government stuck with its "surgical precision" claims and that civilian casualties are vanishingly small?

      Try that in Texas... hell, try it in any state in the union. A foreign aggressor who pulled that on Americans would without doubt create new "terrorists" more quickly than they could kill them.

  2. leaks by svirre · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A useful way of leaking a document to the public while maintaining plausible deniability? The author may be sympathetic to ACLU.