Today we learn from the Washington Post that the army has moved non-classified material that was available to the public on a web site behind a password protected firewall, shutting out the public access to this information.
Army officials moved the Reimer Digital Library ( http://atiam.train.army.mil) behind a password-protected firewall on Feb. 6, restricting access to an electronic trove that is popular with researchers for its wealth of field and technical manuals and documents on military operations, education, training and technology. All are unclassified, and most already are approved for public release.
Who is the government, we the people, this is our government not theirs, if the information is not classified we should be able to access it. Yet at every turn, this administration has acted like that selfish little kid, that crouches over the table, covering something up with his arm and chin, and saying “mine, you can’t see it.” Well that is how kids act, but we correct their bad manners, and let them know they have to share. Fortunately there are ways to make them share (FOIA), but even more unfortunately the Bush administration has fought this transparency in governance at every turn. Let us count the ways that I have emphasized in bold from the article:
For years, open-government advocates have complained about the Bush administration’s penchant for confidentiality, from the White House‘s long-standing refusal to release lists of presidential visitors to the secrecy surrounding the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program and Vice President Cheney‘s energy policy task force.
In 2006, the National Archives acknowledged that the CIA and other agencies had withdrawn thousands of records from the public shelves over several years and inappropriately reclassified many of them. Early in 2002, then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft issued a memo urging federal agencies to use whatever legal means necessary to reject Freedom of Information Act requests for public documents.
Army officials said yesterday that they were compelled to limit access to the Reimer library site to comply with Department of Defense policies that call for tightening the security of military Web sites and to keep better track internally of who is accessing them and why.
You know what happens when you turn light on in a dark place, the vermin go scurrying for cover, well we need to shine the light on this administration and trust me the vermin are going to go scurrying. The problem is the vermin have control of the light switch.
-Josh
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