The library world has been buzzing for the last few days over an article in a small newspaper relaying a report from two UMass Dartmouth professors that a senior at the school claimed he was visited by, as the article put it, “two agents of the Department of Homeland Security” after getting Mao’s Quotations from […]
In fall 2002, the Bush administration stepped up a campaign to publicize the dangers of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, or WMD. At the center of the campaign was an argument that Saddam’s Iraq was an “urgent” threat because of its “massive stockpile of biological weapons … thousands of tons of chemical agents,” […]
Libraries and National Security, an article recently published in First Monday, details the history of librarians and national security from WWI to the present. Libraries have done a complete 180° from their position during the First World War when they sought out a role in the war effort and willingly restricted information. In […]
Even with files going digital and, thus, easily searchable, the FBI is arguing that it doesn’t have to look very hard for info in FOIA requests.
The CIA has created a searchable database containing more than 400 unclassified and declassified Studies in Intelligence articles from 1955-1976.
From the introduction:
Intelligence trailblazer Sherman Kent—the ‘father’ of intelligence analysis in America—created Studies in 1955 as a journal for intelligence professionals. In the first article published in Studies, Kent called for the creation of a […]
“More can be deduced by an intelligent study of public sources than by any number of ‘reliable’ but unintelligent ‘agents’ listening at keyholes or swapping drinks at bars.”
— Hugh Trevor-Roper, veteran of both MI5 and SIS in 1968; cited in West. Faber Book of Espionage (1993).
“Making a case for avoiding open source intelligence is a […]
The Washington Post has a great article demonstrating the effectiveness of research using open sources to reveal government secrets. The jet is apparently being used to transport prisoners to countries that are more permissive when it comes to interrogations. Through the work of a number of journalists and online citizens, a large amount […]