Classified Report On the CIA's Secret Prisons Is Caught In Limbo (techdirt.com)

sandbagger writes: A 6,700-page report that cost $40 million to produce is being blocked from circulation by the US Department of Justice by relabeling it as a Congressional Record, even though it isn't. Why? Congressional records aren't necessarily subject to Freedom of Information Act requests. Techdirt reports: "There had been some hope that ex-Senator Mark Udall might choose to release some of it from the Senate floor before leaving office, but that didn't happen. And, with the changing of the guard, the new head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr, demanded that all the federal government agencies that received the report should return it to him so he can destroy it and make sure that no one ever sees what's in the report. As we noted, however, this whole thing seemed to be an effort to state publicly that the document was a Congressional record. That matters because Congressional records are not subject to FOIA requests. Executive branch records are subject to FOIA requests -- and the ACLU has made a FOIA request to the exec branch for a copy of the report."

Comments

We need a whistleblower

[Anonymous Coward]

And, with the changing of the guard, the new head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr, demanded that all the federal government agencies that received the report should return it to him so he can destroy it and make sure that no one ever sees what's in the report.

Good luck with that, asshole. I hope to see it released in full by a whistleblower. The American public needs and deserves to know what god-awful and unconstitutional deeds are being done in their name.

Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina

[Raseri]

If you're one of his constituents you should probably contact him and tell him to stop fucking up: http://www.burr.senate.gov/ Unfortunately, NC is not one of the 18 states that allow recall of a senator, so you'll have to threaten him with losing his job next election cycle.

Corruption

[amiga3D]

The main reason for all the secrecy is to hide corruption. They love the new laws that piss all over the Constitution. Can you imagine? Secret laws, secret warrants, secret courts and secret prisons. How is any of that part of a free society? George Washington would fucking shoot their asses.

Re:Corruption

[JoeMerchant]

$40M isn't bad for good information. Assuming the cost spread equally among households, this cost the average household something like $0.50. The average household's federal tax burden is somewhere in the $20,000 range (average, not median), I'd be very happy if $5000 of that $20,000 was spent on getting the right information to the right people to make the right decisions about how to spend the other $15,000 - and a report on CIA secret prisons seems like justifiably 1% of 1% of the information that should be gathered and shared appropriately.

The other important use of information (beyond spending allocation) is for policy making and maintaining our diplomatic position and posturing with the rest of the world, reports about secret prisons seem both to be important to that diplomatic position, and also important to control release of on the world stage.

Better that we would have no secrets at all, but if you do that all at once, noone will be happy with the result.

Re:Huge Bonus Scams

[labnet]

this. +
The CIA exists to be the private political arm of big business.
They have been deliberately destabilising the middle east since their inception. Saddam used to be on their payroll. They co-funded and trained the terrorists against Assad causing Europe's refugee crisis.
I'm surprised that Americans are so apathetic against the abuses of their government.