Secrecy News: DSB Members Removed from Web; White House Site Blocks Search Engines
Secrecy News: DSB Members
Removed from Web; White House Site Blocks Search Engines
About
Secrecy News
SECRECY NEWS is an email publication of
the Federation of American Scientists (FAS)
Project on Government Secrecy. It provides
informal coverage of new developments in secrecy,
security and intelligence policies, as well
as links to new acquisitions on the Federation
of American Scientists web site. It
is published 2 to 3 times a week, or as events
warrant. Secrecy
News Article Index
The Defense Science Board (DSB) is part of a network (one wants
to say "cabal") of interlocking advisory panels that play a
significant but obscure role in the formulation of U.S.
national security policy.
"The Board and its members have considerable influence,"
observed freelance journalist Michael Flynn, who has been
investigating the subject, "and they seem to have a stake in
the policies they advocate."
Who is on the DSB? It takes some digging to find out.
The Defense Science Board web site includes a link to "Members," which
used to provide a complete list of the membership. But today the link
is dead. Read
here for more.
"The information listing DSB Members was deleted from the DSB
web site based on DoD guidance for Web Publishing Security
following the 9/11 terrorist attacks," said a DSB spokesman in
an email message.
He didn't explain how deleting the names of corporate CEOs and
others who advise the government on defense policy was likely
to increase security against terrorism.
But he did courteously provide a copy of the current DSB membership,
available
here.
In fact, Michael Flynn pointed out, the names of DSB members,
like those of most other such advisory groups, are public
information and have been posted on the web all along,
although they are rather hard to locate.
The White House is blocking search engines from accessing much
of the White House web site, particularly web pages relating
to Iraq. As a result, these web pages cannot be directly
accessed through external search engines such as google.com.
