The LA Times report makes fair points but much of the information being removed from selected repositories is available elsewhere, as previously discussed here. An example is the removal of info on dams and reservoirs. That is widely available elsewhere, as shown on Google. In particular the Web site of the US Bureau of Reclamation (www.usbr.gov) still provides extensive, detailed info on dams and reservoirs west of the Mississippi: regional and local locational maps, type of dam and construction, capacity of reservoir, photos and so on. Information on nuclear plants, pipelines, infrastructure is still available at government and industry sites. Some of this is better than government resources. The peculiar decision of the Federation of American Scientists to withdraw files in the national interest has been widely cited. And perhaps the info was indeed potentially lethal. But it is also possible that withdrawals are being made for disinformational and propaganda reasons as always done in times of national emergencies. There is a frenzy of release of disinformation by western governments to reputable media outlets, nearly always without supporting documentation for readers to independently decide on its truthfulness. Instead, reputations of the media are being used to burnish the disinfo, and, wow, are these media egos delighted at playing the wargame with the Serious and Important People. Woodward and Hersh in the US, and a bevy of natsec luminaries in the UK, are falling all over themselves at putting out unsupported disinfo fed to them by their governments and agents of governments. The charade of the abandoned Al Qaeda documents, the bin Laden video leaked to The Telegraph, the panic-inducing disclosures to Woodward, Hersh, Loeb, Gertz, the DoD calls for terrorism-fighting technologies, Ashforth's repeated claims of imminent domestic attack, what more could be done to alarm the populace of the leading nations needing a big boost for their corrupt intelligence and military industries? Who better to drive that panic than the complicit media industries -- news, television, movies, religion, the stock market. Declaring information too valuable to be allowed public access is a continuation of the secrecy industry by other means. Reporters need not document their reports, just proclaim the planted documents are bona fide, believe or die, as the preachers of all faiths scare their flocks. Thank Minerva none of the cpunk preachers spew that reputation capital shit.

On Monday, November 19, 2001, at 08:42 PM, F. Marc de Piolenc wrote:

In another life, I sell technical documents, so I monitor bookseller lists. This could interest cypherpunks.

Presumably, the reports to be destroyed include everything to do with crypto.

If I had the money, I would zip over to the States, visit my favorite depository library (where the librarians know me and are certain to be as disgusted by this as I am) and offer to relieve them of anything that can no longer appear on their shelves. Fill a container with "waste paper and microfilm" and send it over here.

Dream on, Marc...

Marc de Piolenc Philippines

And help the narco-nuko-islamo-terrorists in the PI? I just watched U.S. Defense Secretary and the latest PI chick president talking about the Phillipines on tract to be the next major center of Islamic unrest. "We are prepared to bomb Manila in order to root out terrorism," he might as well have said. The U.S. seems to be settling into a comfortable pattern: rolling application of overwhelming high tech power, with the cruise missiles, bombs, and materiel paid for by taxpayers who enjoy the light show on the evening news. The PI chick prez is promising more cooperation in the war on terrorism, so look for more crackdowns on civil liberties in the PI. --Tim May, Occupied America "They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759.