Wikileaks Publishes $1B of Public Domain Research Reports 231
laird writes "Wikileaks has released
nearly a billion dollars worth of quasi-secret reports commissioned by the United States Congress. The 6,780 reports, current as of this month, comprise over 127,000 pages of material on some of the most contentious issues in the nation, from the U.S. relationship with Israel to abortion legislation. Nearly 2,300 of the reports were updated in the last 12 months, while the oldest report goes back to 1990. The release represents the total output of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) electronically available to Congressional offices. The CRS is Congress's analytical agency and has a budget in excess of $100M per year. Although all CRS reports are legally in the public domain, they are quasi-secret because the CRS, as a matter of policy, makes the reports available only to members of Congress, Congressional committees and select sister agencies such as the GAO. Members of Congress are free to selectively release CRS reports to the public but are only motivated to do so when they feel the results would assist them politically. Universally embarrassing reports are kept quiet."
Where do I send my donations? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sunshine (Score:5, Insightful)
Unreleased reports are the bane of a modern society.
Unfavorable medical studies get buries, Congressional reports that never see the light of day.
Hopefully this ray of sunshine will shake things up and give everyone something to complain about.
Saddening (Score:5, Insightful)
For the .01% of the people who would read it... (Score:4, Insightful)
For the .01% of the people who would actually read stuff like this, this is fantastic. It's important that the public has access to this, and a shame that no suitable politician has decided to request all the reports and publish the whole lot (is there any reason this is not the case? Contact your representatives!).
For the rest of us, this is more in a long line of public information that we'll never read - more (potentially interesting but lost among the rest) documents are published by the military, various departments, etc, than we could shake a stick at, and it'd already be a fulltime job to even try to read everything in a field.
Re:Saddening (Score:1, Insightful)
Hey, there's hope yet. We still have Change We Can Believe In, remember? One of the Changes was greater transparency. (cough)
If it embarrasses politicians, it should be leaked (Score:5, Insightful)
If research embarrasses all the politicians in Congress, it's even more important that it be leaked.
Re:For the .01% of the people who would read it... (Score:5, Insightful)
For the rest of us, this is more in a long line of public information that we'll never read - more (potentially interesting but lost among the rest) documents are published by the military, various departments, etc, than we could shake a stick at,
Think tanks, research groups, journalists, students, historians and a whole passle of other professions will find this stuff invaluable.
They have always provided a filter between raw material and the general public. I guarantee that these reports will immediately start getting cited in journals and newspaper articles. Best of all, we can read the primary source without having to pay the RAND Corporation or some other think tank $XYZ to get our hands on the document.
Re:The U.S. government is extremely corrupt. (Score:5, Insightful)
The U.S. government is extremely corrupt.
Human beings are extremely corrupt.
There, fixed that for ya.
Kill all humans!
Re:U.S. government: Corruption everywhere. (Score:0, Insightful)
And they still say that Hitler caused an holocaust ?. Welcome to the new holocaust!. I hope they get as bad press as he and the Germans got. But those were arabs, what ? they do not count ? They are people, too, they count.
Re:Saddening (Score:2, Insightful)
So start a campaign to get them all published. It's not an executive or judicial branch issue, so focus on congress. Start a grass roots campaign, get some publicity, and embarrass congress into making the reports public. The secret to getting something published in the main stream press is to write the article yourself and give it to a reporter to claim as their own. It has to be well written, generally accessible, and interesting.
Wait, this is slashdot, and that's a lot of work. So just whine about it, stuff some potato chips in your face, and go back to playing world of warcraft.
Re:The U.S. government is extremely corrupt. (Score:5, Insightful)
All governments are corrupt. From nations down to neighborhood associations.
It is the nature of some men and women to seek power over others, and because of this driving need, they are more likely to end up in government positions than other persons who might be more qualified in all kinds of ways, but who are not attracted to power. It is also true that those who are ethically unencumbered are more likely to win the races they enter than anyone who tries to follow the rules. The end result is the old adage I first heard applied to the Chicago political machine of the 1960s:
A government does not have to be good, and rarely is. It only has to be good enough that the populace will tolerate it.
The US Constitution was built with this in mind. Its system of checks and balances are designed to keep the natural corruptive nature of politics reined in by making it very difficult for any one individual or group from obtaining across the board power. I think we could now design a better system, since we know a lot more now, and we have some neat technologies that were not available back in the day. But so long as what we've got is good enough, that's not going to happen.
Wikileaks has just raised the bar by shining light into some murky corners. Back room deals and cover-ups that used to be good enough are not good enough any longer... and that's a big win for the Nation.
Re:The U.S. government is extremely corrupt. (Score:5, Insightful)
Corruption is a fairly common attribute of government. Regardless of when and where in human history you look... Power can both corrupt and attract the corrupt/easily corruptable. What's actually more worrying is when people display such great faith that "their government" is immune to or free of corruption.
Re:Sunshine (Score:2, Insightful)
A lot of people go on about government conspiracies but there is no reason for the government to do anything in secret because it can be done out in the open and most people won't take notice and if they do find out odds are they won't care enough to do anything about it.
Re:Why not under FOIA? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why wouldn't these reports be available under FOIA? Considering that its "nominally public domain" already, what exemption would it fall under to bar a request?
You have to know they exist before you can file a FOIA request.
Would Wikileaks publish a document about itself? (Score:4, Insightful)
Suppose someone sends a list to Wikileaks containing all the names of Wikileaks admins and the people behind it.
Would they publish it, so they can stay true to their values, even if this information could effectively mean the end of Wikileaks?
Re:U.S. government: Corruption everywhere. (Score:2, Insightful)
More than 1,000,000 people have been killed in Iraq [opinion.co.uk] at a final cost of at least $3,000,000,000,000 [washingtonpost.com].
Really? Cause last I heard, they pretty much just made that shit up [go.com].
Re:Saddening (Score:1, Insightful)
A couple of weeks in office and Obama has already
Unfortunately, I suspect it's not so much about what he hasn't had time to do, but about what he's also done. Threatening the UK with withdrawing intelligence cooperation if the UK government hands evidence in a torture case to the courts. Appointing RIAA lawyers to significant positions. Nominating no less than three tax evaders. Cozying up with Blair.
I had some hopes for Obama, and I still hope he wont be as much of a disaster as that last guy, but he's shown either some seriously bad judgment or signs of getting reeled in. It's not a good start.
Re:The U.S. government is extremely corrupt. (Score:5, Insightful)
Those who desire power tend to be the least deserving of it.
Re:Everything is so much clearer (Score:2, Insightful)
*sigh*
Of course, always blame it on 1984..
old adage (Score:2, Insightful)
The end result is the old adage I first heard applied to the Chicago political machine of the 1960s: A government does not have to be good, and rarely is. It only has to be good enough that the populace will tolerate it.
An older version of the same adage:
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Re:Sunshine (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The U.S. government is extremely corrupt. (Score:2, Insightful)
Those who desire power tend to be the least deserving of it.
Those who desire power tend to be those who can least be trusted with it.
There, fixed that for ya.
Fight the power!
Re:For the .01% of the people who would read it... (Score:3, Insightful)
There's also the issue that nobody agrees on what's interesting or bad. Because Americans don't talk much about politics in public, we have these little isolated communities that believe that "if only everyone else knew what I knew they'd come over to my side" ranging the spectrum from libertarians to socialists (and also including smaller-issue matters). To some people, the notion of banks using a fractional reserve is part of a huge conspiracy, and to most people reading a fairly standard academic world affairs journal would blow open their perspective on how the world works (if they could manage to sink their teeth into it and understand the implications).
As a people, we very well may be held away from knowledge by conspiracies we can't see, but we're certainly held away from knowledge by not reading things that are perfectly available to us, published in the clear (Middle East Journal and Far Eastern Affairs are examples of good current events journals that would be great for people to read and discuss if they want to understand the world).
Re:Sunshine (Score:5, Insightful)
Your staggering level of cynicism has been duly noted, but it doesn't change the fact that releasing these reports is beneficial for everyone even if every single person doesn't have an explicit interest in them. As a comparison, relatively few people actually ever utilize their 1st Amendment right to say unpopular things, but the fact that the right exists is invaluable.
And yes, I do wonder why studies sponsored by my tax dollars weren't publicly available to begin with.
Re:Sunshine (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of people go on about government conspiracies but there is no reason for the government to do anything in secret because it can be done out in the open and most people won't take notice and if they do find out odds are they won't care enough to do anything about it.
Lets start with government conspiracies. Two examples: telecom spying and extraordinary renditions. The first was done secretly, but journalists knew long before they made it public. The second was done out in the open and a small group of private citizens tracked a fleet of secret CIA jets to a variety of international destinations (which proved hugely embarrassing to quite a few intermediate European countries).
Most people don't have to take notice, nor do they have to care enough to do anything about it.
All that matters is that all of the time, some part of the populace cares and is capable of making a good case why "most people" should too.
available for cost from penny hill (Score:5, Insightful)
What's more, these documents were apparently already available for a fee from this company [pennyhill.com]. All they're doing is (rightly, imho) making them available for free rather than forcing people to pay a publishing company for access to records that we supposedly already own.
Re:How many of these are new? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll tell you what's going on: government documents which are intrinsically public domain are being held behind artificially constructed "pay" walls erected by private companies. It's not an uncommon practice, not only in federal government but all the way down to local city and county governments, and in the past it actually made small amounts of sense. In the pre-internet days distributing documents cost non-trivial amounts of money because physical copies had to be made. Now that the Internet has driven those costs to nearly zero, there is no longer any excuse for these private companies to be acting as the gatekeepers for information about our own government. We should work to tear down these old arrangements and allow people to access government information for free, straight from the source. That's what's going on here.
Re:Saddening (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the Changes was greater transparency. (cough)
What is it with the readers on Slashdot?
This has nothing to do with people on Slashdot, this has to do with Republicans (or Democrats for that matter). No matter what happens, the opposing party will always whinge, lie, cheat, steal to try to make them look better.
Re:The U.S. government is extremely corrupt. (Score:5, Insightful)
We should draft random people to become politicians.
Re:For the .01% of the people who would read it... (Score:3, Insightful)
For the .01% of the people who would actually read stuff like this, this is fantastic
that is true.
For the rest of us, this is more in a long line of public information that we'll never read - more (potentially interesting but lost among the rest) documents are published by the military, various departments, etc, than we could shake a stick at, and it'd already be a fulltime job to even try to read everything in a field.
Let me help you: For the rest of us, it's a good thing that those .01% will look at those documents, and come and let us know when they find a smoking gun.
You've heard of the "many eyes" theory, right? You don't have to personally read them to benefit from their release.
Re:The U.S. government is extremely corrupt. (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, yes! Use force! Only by taking away freedom (the freedom not to be a politician) can we protect freedom!
That's my knee-jerk reaction, and it's like that for a reason--just about the only thing anyone ever proposes is more force. Forcing banks to lend money to people that wouldn't have qualified for loans under the bank's own rules, coupled with the creation (again, through force of federal law) things like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which gave institutions a place to unburden themselves of that debt, got us into the mess we have now. And the first thing people think (well, to give them credit, they did stop it the first time, but when the fear mongering set in, they caved) is "the government should do something". And when they say that, they mean "by force".
Every time you think of or hear of a possible government solution to a problem, ask yourself if this is just another scheme to try to use force to make things the way someone thinks they should be. Force is seductive--it looks so easy. End poverty! Take all the rich bastards' money and give it to the poor! Stop the horrors of drug addiction! Make drugs illegal! Prostitution is immoral! Make it illegal! Pornography {feminist: victimizes women!} {religious right:offends God!} It should be illegal!
The alternative is _so_ _much_ _more_ _work_! It staggers the mind to think of what it would take to teach, encourage, get people to choose to do the thing you think is right. Some of them might not ever do it. It would be _so_ _much_ _easier_ to just _make_ them! And that, basically, is what you get from the left and the right. A plan to force others to do things they way they think they should be done.
The thing is, the people that are in positions of power aren't the problem. It's the power that we have conceded to them. The constitution does not give the government the right to do 1/3rd (made that up, I bet it's actually smaller) of what it does. What we should do is work to reign government back to what the constitution says it is. Then you can fret less about who gets elected, because they will have less power to mess up your life.