On Tuesday, February 12, 2002, at 04:38 PM, Eric Cordian wrote: > Here's an interesting little story. The Feds are rethinking the idea of > continuing to make documents which detail information about vulnerable > infrastructure available to the public. > > Indeed, many such documents are no longer on government Web pages.
I reported first-hand evidence of this in the first few weeks following 911, when I found a bunch of government sites on reactor locations, dam sites, etc. had been made inaccessible. Others confirmed that hundreds of sources of public information--in many case information required by law to be public--ceased being available. Like most government responses to 911, it was a feel-good cosmetic move. Anyone seriously interested in doing damage would spend the extra effort to get beyond the speed bumps, but ordinary folks won't. > .... > The Feds recently sent out a letter to 1300 libraries across the > country, > asking them to destroy a particular document about water supplies. > > The libraries cheerfully complied. > > One wonders if the libraries would have rolled over so easily had the > government requested the destruction of "The Turner Diaries," "Why > Buildings Fall Down," or "Heather Has Two Mommies." Many already have done just such things. And not just recently. --Tim May
