Tag Archives: aftergood

The US government is clamping down on scientists’ ability to discuss and surf freely as part of its response to the release of classified cables by Wikileaks. Today at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, moderators who run an environmental science discussion group called Coral-List have begun deleting any posts that make reference to Wikileak documents( http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/pipermail/coral-list/2010-December/009371.html ). On Friday, at Fermilab in Chicago, access to Wikileaks was blocked by the IT department( http://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/archive_2010/today10-12-03.html ) to “help prevent someone from inadvertently downloading a classified document to a machine on our network” The same day at NASA, employees were told not to use their computers to download information from Wikileaks( http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2010/12/heads-up-nasa-h.html ). Steven Aftergood of the Federation for American Scientists says the actions appear intended to respond to an Office of Management and Budget memo( http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/12/wikileaks_off-limits_to_una… ) that reminds agencies that bringing classified information onto a non-classified system may breach agency regulations. But, he adds, many agencies are going further than they have to by blocking sites entirely. He says that doesn’t make sense when much of the information is already freely available from newspapers such as The New York TImes and The Guardian. “The government has locked itself into a contradictory position that threatens mission performance,” – the idea that government employees should do the best job they can with the information they can obtain, he says. Contrary to what US scientists may have understood from the government’s behavior, it is not a crime for scientists to read classified information that has entered the public domain as long as they have no intent to damage national security by doing so, Aftergood says. But scientists at national labs are at risk of breaking workplace regulations if they load classified information onto their government computer. Aftergood says that the classified cables on wikileaks are not primarily a scientific resource, but they do contain social and geographical data that is of interest to some researchers, he says. Those most likely to be affected by the bans are foreign policy researchers and analysts. In his Secrecy newsletter( http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2010/12/crs_block.html ) Aftergood discusses blocks on Wikileaks at the Library of Congress and comments that researchers for the Congressional Research Service( http://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2010/12/why-the-library-of-congress-is-blocking-wikilea… ), which is part of the Library, may be left unable to compete with other analysts as a result of their inability to read information that everyone else can access. added by: toyotabedzrock