Many journalists and journalism organizations are becoming increasingly concerned at vanishing access to sensitive government, and in some cases business, information in the U.S. I'd like to highlight one fabulous resource for tracking info-access developments:
Secrecy News, published by the
Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy. Editor
Steven Aftergood does a first-class job of covering this demanding beat and providing information and news that is hard to find elsewhere.
Today's issue is a perfect example of the value of Aftergood's work. It includes stories on how Congressional Research Service reports were just taken offline; how the Army suddenly and without a good explanation took offline a website containing embarrassing information mentioned in a recent
Washington Post story; how the Department of Defense recently concealed the names of the members of a particularly influential advisory committee (FAS now offers that
list on its own site, to compensate); and an item on how the White House is blocking search engines from accessing much of the White House website, particularly web pages relating to Iraq. All great stuff, and most issues are packed with such valuable stories. Journalists who haven't yet seen this resource should give it a look.
