This is from the December 12, 2003 program of NOW With Bill Moyers.

Bill Moyers:

Everywhere you look today, or try to look, our right to know is under assault. In the name of fighting terrorists, the government is pulling a veil of secrecy around itself. Information that used to be readily accessible is now kept out of sight.

To cover this story, NOW is collaborating with U.S. News and World Report. Their five month investigation finds that, although the government regularly cites 911 as the basis for secrecy, the true reasons, in many cases, have nothing to do with the War On Terror.

INVESTIGATIVE REPORT: The untold story of the Bush administration's penchant for secrecy
How the public's business gets done out of the public eye

Here's the t r u t h o u t archive of the complete U.S. News and World Report article: Keeping Secrets, written by Christopher H. Schmitt and Edward T. Pound.

This segment was produced by David Brancaccio and Peter Meryash.

Veil of Secrecy - Complete (Small - 40 MB)

Veil of Secrecy - Part 1 of 3 (Small - 11 MB)
Veil of Secrecy - Part 2 of 3 (Small - 16 MB)
Veil of Secrecy - Part 3 of 3 (Small - 13 MB)

Here's some technical information about getting quicktime going to watch these movies.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
(link and text of other article is directly below it)

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/usinfo/press/secrecy.htm

Breaking News 12/12/03
INVESTIGATIVE REPORT: The untold story of the Bush administration's penchant for secrecy
How the public's business gets done out of the public eye

Friday, Dec. 12, the PBS television program NOW with Bill Moyers will air a report on Bush administration secrecy produced in collaboration with U.S. News. Please visit pbs.org for stations and airtimes in your area. The U.S. News article, "Keeping Secrets," will be publshed in Monday's edition. Full text will be available on USNews.com Saturday, Dec. 13, at 6 p.m.

The Bush administration has removed from the public domain millions of pages of information on health, safety, and environmental matters, lowering a shroud of secrecy over many critical operations of the federal government.

The administration's efforts to shield the actions of, and the information held by, the executive branch are far more extensive than has been previously documented. And they reach well beyond security issues.

A five-month investigation by U.S. News details a series of initiatives by administration officials to effectively place large amounts of information out of the reach of ordinary citizens, including data on such issues as drinking-water quality and automotive tire safety. The magazine's inquiry is based on a detailed review of government reports and regulations, of federal agency Web sites, and of legislation pressed by the White House.

U.S. News also analyzed information from public interest groups and others that monitor the administration's activities, and interviewed more than 100 people, including many familiar with the new secrecy initiatives. That information was supplemented by a review of materials provided in response to more than 200 Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the magazine seeking details of federal agencies' practices in providing public access to government information.

Among the findings of the investigation:

Important business and consumer information is increasingly being withheld from the public. The Bush administration is denying access to auto and tire safety information, for instance, that manufacturers are required to provide under a new "early-warning system" created following the Ford-Firestone tire scandal four years ago. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, meanwhile, is more frequently withholding information that would allow the public to scrutinize its product safety findings and product recall actions.

New administrative initiatives have effectively placed off limits critical health and safety information potentially affecting millions of Americans. The information includes data on quality and vulnerability of drinking-water supplies, potential chemical hazards in communities, and safety of airline travel and others forms of transportation.

Beyond the well-publicized cases involving terrorism suspects, the administration is aggressively pursuing secrecy claims in the federal courts in ways little understood--even by some in the legal system. The administration is increasingly invoking a "state secrets" privilege that allows government lawyers to request that civil and criminal cases be effectively closed by asserting that national security would be compromised if they proceed.

New administration policies have thwarted the ability of Congress to exercise its constitutional authority to monitor the executive branch and, in some cases, even to obtain basic information about its actions.

There are no precise statistics on how much government information is rendered secret. One measure, though, can be seen in a tally of how many times officials classify records. In the first two years of Bush's term, his administration classified records some 44.5 million times, or about the same number as in President Clinton's last four years, according to the Information Security Oversight Office, an arm of the National Archives and Records Administration.

MEDIA CONTACT: Rchard Folkers, Director of Media Relations(rfolkers@usnews.com or 202-955-2219)

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/121403A.shtml

Keeping Secrets
By Christopher H. Schmitt and Edward T. Pound
U.S. News & World Report

Friday 12 December 2003

The Bush administration is doing the public's business out of the public eye. Here's how--and why

"Democracies die behind closed doors."
--U.S. Appeals Court Judge Damon J. Keith

At 12:01 p.m. on Jan. 20, 2001, as a bone-chilling rain fell on Washington, George W. Bush took the oath of office as the nation's 43rd president. Later that afternoon, the business of governance officially began. Like other chief executives before him, Bush moved to unravel the efforts of his predecessor. Bush's chief of staff, Andrew Card, directed federal agencies to freeze more than 300 pending regulations issued by the administration of President Bill Clinton. The regulations affected areas ranging from health and safety to the environment and industry. The delay, Card said, would "ensure that the president's appointees have the opportunity to review any new or pending regulations." The process, as it turned out, expressly precluded input from average citizens. Inviting such comments, agency officials concluded, would be "contrary to the public interest."

Ten months later, a former U.S. Army Ranger named Joseph McCormick found out just how hard it was to get information from the new administration. A resident of Floyd County, Va., in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, McCormick discovered that two big energy companies planned to run a high-volume natural gas pipeline through the center of his community. He wanted to help organize citizens by identifying residents through whose property the 30-inch pipeline would run. McCormick turned to Washington, seeking a project map from federal regulators. The answer? A pointed "no." Although such information was "previously public," officials of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission told McCormick, disclosing the route of the new pipeline could provide a road map for terrorists. McCormick was nonplused. Once construction began, he says, the pipeline's location would be obvious to anyone. "I understand about security," the rangy, soft-spoken former business executive says. "But there certainly is a balance--it's about people's right to use the information of an open society to protect their rights."

For the past three years, the Bush administration has quietly but efficiently dropped a shroud of secrecy across many critical operations of the federal government--cloaking its own affairs from scrutiny and removing from the public domain important information on health, safety, and environmental matters. The result has been a reversal of a decades-long trend of openness in government while making increasing amounts of information unavailable to the taxpayers who pay for its collection and analysis. Bush administration officials often cite the September 11 attacks as the reason for the enhanced secrecy. But as the Inauguration Day directive from Card indicates, the initiative to wall off records and information previously in the public domain began from Day 1. Steven Garfinkel, a retired government lawyer and expert on classified information, puts it this way: "I think they have an overreliance on the utility of secrecy. They don't seem to realize secrecy is a two-edge sword that cuts you as well as protects you." Even supporters of the administration, many of whom agree that security needed to be bolstered after the attacks, say Bush and his inner circle have been unusually assertive in their commitment to increased government secrecy. "Tightly controlling information, from the White House on down, has been the hallmark of this administration," says Roger Pilon, vice president of legal affairs for the Cato Institute.

Air and water
Some of the Bush administration's initiatives have been well chronicled. Its secret deportation of immigrants suspected as terrorists, its refusal to name detainees at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the new surveillance powers granted under the post-9/11 U.S.A. Patriot Act have all been debated at length by the administration and its critics. The clandestine workings of an energy task force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney have also been the subject of litigation, now before the Supreme Court.

But the administration's efforts to shield the actions of, and the information obtained by, the executive branch are far more extensive than has been previously documented. A five-month investigation by U.S. News detailed a series of initiatives by administration officials to effectively place large amounts of information out of the reach of ordinary citizens. The magazine's inquiry is based on a detailed review of government reports and regulations, federal agency Web sites, and legislation pressed by the White House. U.S. News also analyzed information from public interest groups and others that monitor the administration's activities, and interviewed more than 100 people, including many familiar with the new secrecy initiatives. That information was supplemented by a review of materials provided in response to more than 200 Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the magazine seeking details of federal agencies' practices in providing public access to government information.

The principal findings:
Important business and consumer information is increasingly being withheld from the public. The Bush administration is denying access to auto and tire safety information, for instance, that manufacturers are required to provide under a new "early-warning" system created following the Ford-Firestone tire scandal four years ago. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, meanwhile, is more frequently withholding information that would allow the public to scrutinize its product safety findings and product recall actions.

New administration initiatives have effectively placed off limits critical health and safety information potentially affecting millions of Americans. The information includes data on quality and vulnerability of drinking-water supplies, potential chemical hazards in communities, and safety of airline travel and other forms of transportation. In Aberdeen, Md., families who live near an Army weapons base are suing the Army for details of toxic pollution fouling the town's drinking-water supplies. Citing security, the Army has refused to provide information that could help residents locate and track the pollution.

Beyond the well-publicized cases involving terrorism suspects, the administration is aggressively pursuing secrecy claims in the federal courts in ways little understood--even by some in the legal system. The administration is increasingly invoking a "state secrets" privilege (box, Page 24) that allows government lawyers to request that civil and criminal cases be effectively closed by asserting that national security would be compromised if they proceed. It is impossible to say how often government lawyers have invoked the privilege. But William Weaver, a professor at the University of Texas-El Paso, who recently completed a study of the historical use of the privilege, says the Bush administration is asserting it "with offhanded abandon." In one case, Weaver says, the government invoked the privilege 245 times. In another, involving allegations of racial discrimination, the Central Intelligence Agency demanded, and won, return of information it had provided to a former employee's attorneys--only to later disclose the very information that it claimed would jeopardize national security.

New administration policies have thwarted the ability of Congress to exercise its constitutional authority to monitor the executive branch and, in some cases, even to obtain basic information about its actions. One Republican lawmaker, Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana, became so frustrated with the White House's refusal to cooperate in an investigation that he exclaimed, during a hearing: "This is not a monarchy!" Some see a fundamental transformation in the past three years. "What has stunned us so much," says Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a public interest group in Washington that monitors government activities, "is how rapidly we've moved from a principle of `right to know' to one edging up to `need to know.' "

The White House declined repeated requests by U.S. News to discuss the new secrecy initiatives with the administration's top policy and legal officials. Two Bush officials who did comment defended the administration and rejected criticism of what many call its "penchant for secrecy." Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, says that besides the extraordinary steps the president has taken to protect the nation, Bush and other senior officials must keep private advice given in areas such as intelligence and policymaking, if that advice is to remain candid. Overall, Bartlett says, "the administration is open, and the process in which this administration conducts its business is as transparent as possible." There is, he says, "great respect for the law, and great respect for the American people knowing how their government is operating."

Bartlett says that some administration critics "such as environmentalists . . . want to use [secrecy] as a bogeyman." He adds: "For every series of examples you could find where you could make the claim of a `penchant for secrecy,' I could probably come up with several that demonstrate the transparency of our process." Asked for examples, the communications director offered none.

There are no precise statistics on how much government information is rendered secret. One measure, though, can be seen in a tally of how many times officials classify records. In the first two years of Bush's term, his administration classified records some 44.5 million times, or about the same number as in President Clinton's last four years, according to the Information Security Oversight Office, an arm of the National Archives and Records Administration. But the picture is more complicated than that. In an executive order issued last March, Bush made it easier to reclassify information that had previously been declassified--allowing executive-branch agencies to drop a cloak of secrecy over reams of information, some of which had been made available to the public.

Bait and switch
In addition, under three other little-noticed executive orders, Bush increased the number of officials who can classify records to include the secretary of agriculture, the secretary of health and human services, and the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Now, all three can label information at the "secret" level, rendering it unavailable for public review. Traditionally, classification authority has resided in federal agencies engaged in national security work. "We don't know yet how frequently the authority is being exercised," says Steven Aftergood, who publishes an authoritative newsletter in Washington on government secrecy. "But it is a sign of the times that these purely domestic agencies have been given national security classification authority. It is another indication of how our government is being transformed under pressure of the perceived terrorist threat." J. William Leonard, director of the information oversight office, estimates that up to half of what the government now classifies needn't be. "You can't have an effective secrecy process," he cautions, "unless you're discerning in how you use it."

From the start, the Bush White House has resisted efforts to disclose information about executive-branch activities and decision making. The energy task force headed by Cheney is just one example. In May 2001, the task force produced a report calling for increased oil and gas drilling, including on public land. The Sierra Club and another activist group, Judicial Watch, sued to get access to task-force records, saying that energy lobbyists unduly influenced the group. Citing the Constitution's separation of powers clause, the administration is arguing that the courts can't compel Cheney to disclose information about his advice to the president. A federal judge ordered the administration to produce the records, prompting an appeal to the Supreme Court.

Energy interests aren't alone in winning a friendly hearing from the Bush administration. Auto and tire manufacturers prevailed in persuading the administration to limit disclosure requirements stemming from one of the highest-profile corporate scandals of recent years. Four years ago, after news broke that failing Firestone tires on Ford SUVs had caused hundreds of deaths and many more accidents, Congress enacted a new auto and tire safety law. A cornerstone was a requirement that manufacturers submit safety data to a government early-warning system, which would provide clues to help prevent another scandal. Lawmakers backing the system wanted the data made available to the public. After the legislation passed, officials at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said they didn't expect to create any new categories of secrecy for the information; they indicated that key data would automatically be made public. That sparked protests from automakers, tire manufacturers, and others. After months of pressure, transportation officials decided to make vital information such as warranty claims, field reports from dealers, and consumer complaints--all potentially valuable sources of safety information--secret. "It was more or less a bait and switch," says Laura MacCleery, auto-safety counsel for Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer group. "You're talking about information that will empower consumers. The manufacturers are not going to give that up easily."

Get out of jail free
Government officials, unsurprisingly, don't see it that way. Lloyd Guerci, a Transportation Department attorney involved in writing the new regulations, declined to comment. But Ray Tyson, a spokesman for the traffic safety administration, denies the agency caved to industry pressure: "We've listened to all who have opinions and reached a compromise that probably isn't satisfactory to anybody."

Some of the strongest opposition to making the warning-system data public came from the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. The organization, whose membership comprises U.S. and international carmakers, argued that releasing the information would harm them competitively. The Bush administration has close ties to the carmakers. Bush Chief of Staff Card has been General Motors' top lobbyist and head of a trade group of major domestic automakers. Jacqueline Glassman, NHTSA's chief counsel, is a former top lawyer for DaimlerChrysler Corp. In the months before the new regulations were released, industry officials met several times with officials from the White House's Office of Management and Budget.

The administration's commitment to increased secrecy measures extends to the area of "critical infrastructure information," or CII. In layman's terms, this refers to transportation, communications, energy, and other systems that make modern society run. The Homeland Security Act allows companies to make voluntary submissions of information about critical infrastructure to the Department of Homeland Security. The idea is to encourage firms to share information crucial to running and protecting those facilities. But under the terms of the law, when a company does this, the information is exempted from public disclosure and cannot be used without the submitting party's permission in any civil proceeding, even a government enforcement action. Some critics see this as a get-out-of-jail-free card, allowing companies worried about potential litigation or regulatory actions to place troublesome information in a convenient "homeland security" vault. "The sweep of it is amazing," says Beryl Howell, former general counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee. "Savvy businesses will be able to mark every document handed over [to] government officials as `CII' to ensure their confidentiality." Companies "wanted liability exemption long before 9/11," adds Patrice McDermott, a lobbyist for the American Library Association, which has a tradition of advocacy on right-to-know issues. "Now, they've got it."

Under the administration's plan to implement the Homeland Security Act, some businesses may get even more protection. When Congress passed the law, it said the antidisclosure provision would apply only to information submitted to the Department of Homeland Security. The department recently proposed extending the provision to cover information submitted to any federal agency. A department spokesman did not respond to requests for comment. Business objections were also pivotal when the Environmental Protection Agency recently backed off a plan that would have required some companies to disclose more about chemical stockpiles in communities.

If the administration's secrecy policies have helped business, they have done little for individuals worried about health and safety issues. The residents of the small town of Aberdeen, Md., can attest to that. On a chilly fall evening, some 100 people gathered at the Aberdeen firehouse to hear the latest about a toxic substance called perchlorate. An ingredient in rocket fuel, perchlorate has entered the aquifer that feeds the town's drinking-water wells. The culprit is the nearby U.S. Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground, where since World War I, all manner of weapons have been tested.

Trigger finger
After word of the perchlorate contamination broke, a coalition of citizens began working with the Army to try to attack the unseen plume of pollution moving through the ground. But earlier this year, the Army delivered Aberdeen residents a sharp blow. It began censoring maps to eliminate features like street names and building locations--information critical to understanding and tracking where contamination might have occurred or where environmental testing was being done.

The reason? The information, the Army says, could provide clues helpful to terrorists. Arlen Crabb, the head of a citizens' group, doesn't buy it. "It's an abuse of power," says Crabb, a 20-year Army veteran, whose well lies just a mile and a half from the base. His coalition is suing the Army, citing health and safety concerns. "We're not a bunch of radicals. We've got to have the proof. The government has to be transparent."

Aberdeen is but one example of the way enhanced security measures increasingly conflict with the health and safety concerns of ordinary Americans. Two basics--drinking water and airline travel--help illustrate the trend. A public health and bioterrorism law enacted last year requires, among other things, that operators of local water systems study vulnerabilities to attack or other disruptions and draw up plans to address any weaknesses. Republicans and Democrats praised the measure, pushed by the Bush administration, as a prudent response to potential terrorist attacks. But there's a catch. Residents are precluded from obtaining most information about any vulnerabilities.

This wasn't always the case. In 1996, Congress passed several amendments to the Clean Water Act calling for "source water assessments" to be made of water supply systems. The idea was that the assessments, covering such things as sources of contamination, would arm the public with information necessary to push for improvements. Today, the water assessments are still being done, but some citizens' groups say that because of Bush administration policy, the release of information has been so restricted that there is too little specific information to act upon. They blame the Environmental Protection Agency for urging states to limit information provided to the public from the assessments. As a result, the program has been fundamentally reshaped from one that has made information widely available to one that now forces citizens to essentially operate on a need-to-know basis, says Stephen Gasteyer, a Washington specialist on water-quality issues. "People [are] being overly zealous in their enforcement of safety and security, and perhaps a little paranoid," he says. "So you're getting releases of information so ambiguous that it's not terribly useful." Cynthia Dougherty, director of EPA's groundwater and drinking-water office, described her agency's policy as laying out "minimal standards," so that states that had been intending to more fully disclose information "had the opportunity to decide to make a change."

The Federal Aviation Administration has its own security concerns, and supporters say it has addressed them vigorously. In doing so, however, the agency has also made it harder for Americans to obtain the kind of safety information once considered routine. The FAA has eliminated online access to records on enforcement actions taken against airlines, pilots, mechanics, and others. That came shortly after the 9/11 attacks, when it was discovered that information was available on things like breaches of airport security, says Rebecca Trexler, an FAA spokeswoman. Balancing such concerns isn't easy. But rather than cut off access to just that information, the agency pulled back all enforcement records. The FAA has also backed away from providing access to safety information voluntarily submitted by airlines.

As worrisome as the specter of terrorism is for many Americans, many still grumble about being kept in the dark unnecessarily. Under rules the Transportation Security Administration adopted last year--with no public notice or comment--the traveling public no longer has access to key government information on the safety and security of all modes of transportation. The sweeping restrictions go beyond protecting details about security or screening systems to include information on enforcement actions or effectiveness of security measures. The new TSA rules also establish a new, looser standard for denying access to information: Material can be withheld from the public, the rules say, simply if it's "impractical" to release it. The agency did not respond to requests for comment.

This same pattern can be seen in one federal agency after another. As Joseph McCormick, the former Army Ranger trying to learn more about the pipeline planned for Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, learned, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission now restricts even the most basic information about such projects. The agency says its approach is "balanced," adding that security concerns amply justify the changes.

The Bush administration is pressing the courts to impose more secrecy, too. Jeffrey Sterling, 36, a former CIA operations officer, can testify to that. Sterling, who is black, is suing the CIA for discrimination. In September, with his attorneys in the midst of preparing important filings, a CIA security officer paid them a visit, demanding return of documents the agency had previously provided. A mistake had been made, the officer explained, and the records contained information that if disclosed would gravely damage national security. The officer warned that failure to comply could lead to prison or loss of a security clearance, according to the lawyers. Although vital to Sterling's case, the lawyers reluctantly gave up the records.

What was so important? In a federal courtroom in Alexandria, Va., a Justice Department attorney recently explained that the records included a pseudonym given to Sterling for an internal CIA proceeding on his discrimination complaint. In fact, the pseudonym, which Sterling never used in an operation, had already been disclosed through a clerical error. Mark Zaid, one of Sterling's attorneys, says the pseudonym is just a misdirection play by the CIA. The real reason the agency demanded the files back, he says, is that they included information supporting Sterling's discrimination complaint. Zaid says he has never encountered such heavy-handed treatment from the CIA. "When they have an administration that is willing to cater [to secrecy], they go for it," he says, "because they know they can get away with it." A CIA spokesman declined comment.

In this case, which is still pending, the administration is invoking the "state secrets" privilege, in which it asserts that a case can't proceed normally without disclosing information harmful to national security. The Justice Department says it can't provide statistics on how often it invokes the privilege. But Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor active in national security matters, says: "In the past, it was an unusual thing. The Bush administration is faster on the trigger."

Surveillance
At the same time, the government is opening up a related front. Last spring, the TSA effectively shut down the case of Mohammed Ali Ahmed, an Indian Muslim and naturalized citizen. In September 2001, Ahmed and three of his children were removed from an American Airlines flight. Last year, Ahmed filed a civil rights suit against the airline. But TSA head James Loy intervened, saying that giving Ahmed information about his family's removal would compromise airline security. The government, in other words, was asserting a claim to withhold the very information Ahmed needed to pursue his case, says his attorney, Wayne Krause, of the Texas Civil Rights Project. "You're looking at an almost unprecedented vehicle to suppress information that is vital to the public and the people who want to vindicate their rights," Krause says.

Secret evidence of a different kind comes into play through a little-noticed effect of the U.S.A. Patriot Act. A key provision allows information from surveillance approved for intelligence gathering to be used to convict a defendant in criminal court. But the government's application--which states the case for the snooping--isn't available for defendants to see, as in traditional law enforcement surveillance cases. With government agencies now hoarding all manner of secret information, the growing stockpile represents an opportunity for abusive leaks, critics say. The new law takes note of that, by allowing suits against the federal government. But there's an important catch--in order to seek redress, one must forfeit the right to a jury trial. Instead, the action must be held before a judge; judges, typically, are much more conservative in awarding damages than are juries.

Most Americans appreciate the need for increased security. But with conflicts between safety and civil rights increasing, the need for an arbiter is acute--which is perhaps the key reason why the vast new security powers of many executive-branch agencies are so alarming to citizens' groups and others. A diminished role of congressional oversight is just one area of fallout, but there are others. Some examples:

It took the threat of a subpoena from the independent commission investigating the 9/11 attacks to force the White House to turn over intelligence reports. Even at that, family members of victims complain, there were too many restrictions on release of the information. In Congress, the administration has rebuffed members on a range of issues often unrelated to security concerns.

In a huge military spending bill last year, Congress directed President Bush to give it 30 days' notice before initiating certain sensitive defense programs. Bush signed the bill into law but rejected the restraint and said he would ignore the provision if he deemed it necessary.

Initial contracts to rebuild Iraq, worth billions of dollars, were awarded in secret. Bids were limited to companies invited to participate, and many had close ties to the White House. Members of Congress later pressed for an open bidding process.

Many public interest groups report that government agencies are more readily denying Freedom of Information Act requests--while also increasing fees, something small-budget groups say they can ill afford. The Sierra Club, for example, has been thwarted in getting information on problems at huge "factory farms" that pollute rivers and groundwater. Says David Bookbinder, senior attorney for the group: "What's different about this administration is their willingness to say, `We're going to keep everything secret until we're forced to disclose it--no matter what it is.' "

The administration is undeterred by such complaints. "I think what you've seen is a White House that has valued openness," says Daniel Bryant, assistant attorney general for legal policy, and "that knows that openness with the public facilitates confidence in government."

That's not the way Jim Kerrigan sees it. He operates a small market-research firm in Sterling, Va., outside Washington. For more than a decade, he has forecast federal spending on information technology. Three months after Bush took office, the Office of Management and Budget issued a memo telling government officials to no longer make available such information so as to "preserve the confidentiality of the deliberations that led to the president's budget decisions."

As a result, Kerrigan says, information began to dry up. Requests were ignored. And the data he did get came with so much information censored out that they were barely usable. The fees Kerrigan paid for a request, which once topped out at $300, jumped to as much as $6,500. "I can't afford that," he says. "This administration's policy is to withhold information as much as possible."

Key Dates: Secrecy and the Bush Administration:

Inauguration Day (1/20/01) Administration freezes Clinton-era regulations, without allowing for public comment.
10/12/01 Attorney General John Ashcroft, reversing Clinton policy, encourages agencies to deny Freedom of Information Act requests if a "sound legal basis" exists.
10/26/01 President Bush signs U.S.A. Patriot Act, expanding law enforcement powers and government surveillance.
2/22/02 Congress's General Accounting Office sues Vice President Dick Cheney for refusing to disclose records of his energy task force; the GAO eventually loses its case. A separate private case is pending.
3/19/02 White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card directs federal agencies to protect sensitive security information.
11/25/02 Bush signs Homeland Security Act. Its provisions restrict public access to information filed by companies about "critical infrastructure," among other matters.
01/3/03 Administration asks, in papers filed before the Supreme Court, for significant narrowing of the Freedom of Information Act.
3/25/03 Bush issues standards on classified material, favoring secrecy and reversing provisions on openness.

Ran into Peace Man while he was selling his CDs walking up and down Solano Avenue in Berkeley.

He has a CD Baby website too.

Just checking it out myself right now, so I don't know what to expect whatsoever -- but the guy was a trip and I told him I'd give him a plug...

The Shrub's own experts are telling us we're all hosed. (Over the next 3-20 years).

What do you think guys? Is this for real? Or are they just trying to freak us out?

Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us
By Mark Townsend and Paul Harris for the Observer.

and

Leaked Pentagon report warns climate change may bring famine, war: report
By AFP.

Here's a clip from the AFP story:

The report, quoted in the paper, concluded: "Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life.... Once again, warfare would define human life."

Its authors -- Peter Schwartz, a CIA (news - web sites) consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of Global Business Network based in California -- said climate change should be considered "immediately" as a top political and military issue.

It "should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern", they were quoted as saying.

Some examples given of probable scenarios in the dramatic report include:

-- Britain will have winters similar to those in current-day Siberia as European temperatures drop off radically by 2020.

-- by 2007 violent storms will make large parts of the Netherlands uninhabitable and lead to a breach in the acqueduct system in California that supplies all water to densely populated southern California

-- Europe and the United States become "virtual fortresses" trying to keep out millions of migrants whose homelands have been wiped out by rising sea levels or made unfarmable by drought.

-- "catastrophic" shortages of potable water and energy will lead to widespread war by 2020.

Randall, one of the authors, called his findings "depressing stuff" and warned that it might even be too late to prevent future disasters.

"We don't know exactly where we are in the process. It could start tomorrow and we would not know for another five years," he told the paper.

Experts familiar with the report told the newspaper that the threat to global stability "vastly eclipses that of terrorism".

Taking environmental pollution and climate change into account in political and military strategy is a new, complicated and necessary challenge for leaders, Randall said.

"It is a national security threat that is unique because there is no enemy to point your guns at and we have no control over the threat," he said.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad (other article follows):

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1153513,00.html

Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us

· Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war
· Britain will be 'Siberian' in less than 20 years
· Threat to the world is greater than terrorism

Mark Townsend and Paul Harris in New York
Sunday February 22, 2004
The Observer

Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters..

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'

The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.

The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Climate change 'should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern', say the authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.

An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is 'plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately', they conclude. As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions.

Last week the Bush administration came under heavy fire from a large body of respected scientists who claimed that it cherry-picked science to suit its policy agenda and suppressed studies that it did not like. Jeremy Symons, a former whistleblower at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said that suppression of the report for four months was a further example of the White House trying to bury the threat of climate change.

Senior climatologists, however, believe that their verdicts could prove the catalyst in forcing Bush to accept climate change as a real and happening phenomenon. They also hope it will convince the United States to sign up to global treaties to reduce the rate of climatic change.

A group of eminent UK scientists recently visited the White House to voice their fears over global warming, part of an intensifying drive to get the US to treat the issue seriously. Sources have told The Observer that American officials appeared extremely sensitive about the issue when faced with complaints that America's public stance appeared increasingly out of touch.

One even alleged that the White House had written to complain about some of the comments attributed to Professor Sir David King, Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser, after he branded the President's position on the issue as indefensible.

Among those scientists present at the White House talks were Professor John Schellnhuber, former chief environmental adviser to the German government and head of the UK's leading group of climate scientists at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. He said that the Pentagon's internal fears should prove the 'tipping point' in persuading Bush to accept climatic change.

Sir John Houghton, former chief executive of the Meteorological Office - and the first senior figure to liken the threat of climate change to that of terrorism - said: 'If the Pentagon is sending out that sort of message, then this is an important document indeed.'

Bob Watson, chief scientist for the World Bank and former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, added that the Pentagon's dire warnings could no longer be ignored.

'Can Bush ignore the Pentagon? It's going be hard to blow off this sort of document. Its hugely embarrassing. After all, Bush's single highest priority is national defence. The Pentagon is no wacko, liberal group, generally speaking it is conservative. If climate change is a threat to national security and the economy, then he has to act. There are two groups the Bush Administration tend to listen to, the oil lobby and the Pentagon,' added Watson.

'You've got a President who says global warming is a hoax, and across the Potomac river you've got a Pentagon preparing for climate wars. It's pretty scary when Bush starts to ignore his own government on this issue,' said Rob Gueterbock of Greenpeace.

Already, according to Randall and Schwartz, the planet is carrying a higher population than it can sustain. By 2020 'catastrophic' shortages of water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome, plunging the planet into war. They warn that 8,200 years ago climatic conditions brought widespread crop failure, famine, disease and mass migration of populations that could soon be repeated.

Randall told The Observer that the potential ramifications of rapid climate change would create global chaos. 'This is depressing stuff,' he said. 'It is a national security threat that is unique because there is no enemy to point your guns at and we have no control over the threat.'

Randall added that it was already possibly too late to prevent a disaster happening. 'We don't know exactly where we are in the process. It could start tomorrow and we would not know for another five years,' he said.

'The consequences for some nations of the climate change are unbelievable. It seems obvious that cutting the use of fossil fuels would be worthwhile.'

So dramatic are the report's scenarios, Watson said, that they may prove vital in the US elections. Democratic frontrunner John Kerry is known to accept climate change as a real problem. Scientists disillusioned with Bush's stance are threatening to make sure Kerry uses the Pentagon report in his campaign.

The fact that Marshall is behind its scathing findings will aid Kerry's cause. Marshall, 82, is a Pentagon legend who heads a secretive think-tank dedicated to weighing risks to national security called the Office of Net Assessment. Dubbed 'Yoda' by Pentagon insiders who respect his vast experience, he is credited with being behind the Department of Defence's push on ballistic-missile defence.

Symons, who left the EPA in protest at political interference, said that the suppression of the report was a further instance of the White House trying to bury evidence of climate change. 'It is yet another example of why this government should stop burying its head in the sand on this issue.'

Symons said the Bush administration's close links to high-powered energy and oil companies was vital in understanding why climate change was received sceptically in the Oval Office. 'This administration is ignoring the evidence in order to placate a handful of large energy and oil companies,' he added.

***

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1521&e=2&u=/afp/britain_us_environment

Leaked Pentagon report warns climate change may bring famine, war: report

Sun Feb 22, 5:17 PM ET

Add Politics - AFP to My Yahoo!

LONDON (AFP) - A secret report prepared by the Pentagon (news - web sites) warns that climate change may lead to global catastrophe costing millions of lives and is a far greater threat than terrorism.

Pentagon Photo

The report was ordered by an influential US Pentagon advisor but was covered up by "US defense chiefs" for four months, until it was "obtained" by the British weekly The Observer.

The leak promises to draw angry attention to US environmental and military policies, following Washington's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol (news - web sites) on climate change and President George W. Bush (news - web sites)'s skepticism about global warning -- a stance that has stunned scientists worldwide.

The Pentagon report, commissioned by Andrew Marshall, predicts that "abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies," The Observer reported.

The report, quoted in the paper, concluded: "Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life.... Once again, warfare would define human life."

Its authors -- Peter Schwartz, a CIA (news - web sites) consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of Global Business Network based in California -- said climate change should be considered "immediately" as a top political and military issue.

It "should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern", they were quoted as saying.

Some examples given of probable scenarios in the dramatic report include:

-- Britain will have winters similar to those in current-day Siberia as European temperatures drop off radically by 2020.

-- by 2007 violent storms will make large parts of the Netherlands uninhabitable and lead to a breach in the acqueduct system in California that supplies all water to densely populated southern California

-- Europe and the United States become "virtual fortresses" trying to keep out millions of migrants whose homelands have been wiped out by rising sea levels or made unfarmable by drought.

-- "catastrophic" shortages of potable water and energy will lead to widespread war by 2020.

Randall, one of the authors, called his findings "depressing stuff" and warned that it might even be too late to prevent future disasters.

"We don't know exactly where we are in the process. It could start tomorrow and we would not know for another five years," he told the paper.

Experts familiar with the report told the newspaper that the threat to global stability "vastly eclipses that of terrorism".

Taking environmental pollution and climate change into account in political and military strategy is a new, complicated and necessary challenge for leaders, Randall said.

"It is a national security threat that is unique because there is no enemy to point your guns at and we have no control over the threat," he said.

Coming from the Pentagon, normally a bastion of conservative politics, the report is expected to bring environmental issues to the fore in the US presidential race.

Last week the Union of Concerned Scientists, an influential and non-partisan group that includes 20 Nobel laureates, accused the Bush administration of having deliberately distorted scientific fact to serve its policy agenda and having "misled the public".

Its 38-page report, which it said took over a year to prepare and was not time to coincide with the campaign season, details how Washington "systematically" skewed government scientific studies, suppressed others, stacked panels with political and unqualified appointees and often refused to seek independent expertise on issues.

Critics of the report quoted by the New York Times denied there was deliberate misrepresentation and called it politically motivated.

The person behind the leaked Pentagon report, Andrew Marsall, cannot be accused of the same partisan politicking.

Marsall, 82, has been an advisor for the defense department for decades, and was described by The Observer as the author of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's plans for a major transformation of the US military.

Update 8:33 am 2/22/04 - Damn. He's gonna run as an Independent.
Oh well. Let's hope nobody cares.

Update 4:50pm 2/21/04: Nader will be
announcing his plans tomorrow on Meet the Press (8 am CBS). (Yes, I'll be recording it. I'll try to get it up in the morning quick-like. Just play back any old tape of him from 2000. He's saying the same thing. I'm not going to promote him any by re-running the footage.)

I just sent this letter to Ralph Nader's exploratory committee.

The email is info@naderexplore04.org, in case you want to let them know what you think. Please do.

Dear Ralph (and his committee),

Please don't do this guys.

I can't believe you would all risk the safety of our country and the world, by doing anything that could jeopardize removing President Bush from power this year.

Even though I have mixed feelings about his not pulling out the day before the election in 2000, I've been defending Ralph over the last few months, and telling people that he eventually would come out on the side of the Democrats this year in order to help secure the election -- because he realizes what's at stake.

We simply can't afford to fragment the votes against Bush this time.

If Ralph runs in this election this time, I will have to question his ulterior motives for doing so. No "greater good" can ever come from such a thing that can only do damage to the movement in the short term.

If Ralph runs in this election this time, to me, he will have let his country down. (Again.)

I hope you guys will do the right thing.

Thanks for listening.

Lisa Rein

http://onlisareinsradar.com

here's the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://news.myway.com/top/article/id/41576%7Ctop%7C02-20-2004%3A%3A18%3A45%7Creuters.html

Nader to Announce Presidential Plans on Sunday
Email this story

Nader to Announce Presidential Plans on Sunday

Feb 20, 6:27 PM (ET)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Consumer advocate Ralph Nader, whose third party run in 2000 many Democrats say cost Al Gore the presidency, will announce on Sunday whether he will run again this year.

"He will be announcing his decision on 'Meet the Press,"' said Linda Schade, a spokeswoman for Nader's presidential exploratory committee.

She said only Nader knew what he was planning to do when he appears on NBC's Sunday morning talk show.

Many Democrats, still angry at Republican George W. Bush's narrow victory in 2000, blame Nader's liberal, consumer-oriented run as the Green Party's presidential nominee for taking away votes from their candidate, then-Vice President Gore.

The number of Nader votes in key states such as Florida and New Hampshire were greater than the gap between Bush's winning total and Gore's losing total. Gore would have been elected president had he won one more state.

Nader, who turns 70 next week, said last year he would not run again as the Green Party nominee but did not rule out running as an independent candidate. An independent run, however, might make it more difficult for him to get on all 50 state ballots.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe told CNN he had met with Nader several times to urge him not to run. He said he told Nader that his legacy should not become eight years of Bush as president.

"It would be a shame if what Americans remember after a lifetime fighting for working families is the fact that he did not fight on the side of the Democratic Party and its nominee when all of those issues he and us hold dear were at risk," the Democratic committee said in a statement.

"Park and Ride" is the name that Ron Taylor and I play under when it's just the two of us doing a set.

It's that time again! Ron and I are going to do an acoustic set at a benefit for Loma Vista Farm This Sunday, February 22, around 5:30 pm. The whole thing is going on from 4-7pm.

Let me know if you plan on coming and I'll bring a free CD to give you at the show!

It's at:

Springbrook Masonic Temple, 101 Temple Way, Vallejo

Spaghetti dinner and silent auction fundraiser for
Loma Vista Farm in Vallejo.
No host social 4-5pm (magician will perform from approx. 4:10-4:30)
dinner 5-7pm (Raymond Victor band, Park and Ride, Polinesian Dance group)

$15.00 per person
5 and under are free
tickets available at the door

Directions:
I80 East to Vallejo
Tennessee East exit
at the stop sign turn left then make a right onto Tennessee Street
Left on Locust
Left on Masonic
Left on Temple
Drive thru the gate located at the top of the hill.

Save Loma Vista Farm

What is Loma Vista Farm?
Loma Vista Farm is an outdoor classroom for children, which is a part of the Vallejo City Unified School District. Run on three acres by the students themselves, the farm is home to many animals including horses, cows, goats, sheep, chickens, an organic garden and a greenhouse. The Farm serves over 18,000 children a year, providing an intriguing environment for education in science, human relation skills and agricultural literacy.

History
For nearly 30 years, Loma Vista Farm has been operated under the direction of teacher Thom Arcadi and visited by students in Solano County and other school districts in the Bay Area. Vallejo families visit the Farm, and gardening classes are held for adults.

Loma Vista Farm is in Danger!
Because of the current fiscal crisis, the Vallejo City Unified School District Board had to make a difficult decision to eliminate all of the funding for Loma Vista Farm in recent budget cuts. These cuts will close down the farm by summer 2003 if action is not taken to save it.

How You Can Help

* Help fix up the farm: fix-it skills and green thumbs needed; yard duty helpers on open farm days.
* Volunteer: fundraising/grand writers needed
* Donate supplies: copy paper, flower pots and flats, potting soil, animal feed, etc.
* Sponsor an animal: honor your name or advertise your business with a special sign near the animal you sponsor.
* Dine at Chevy's every first Monday of each month, mention Loma Vista Farm, and 20 percent of your bill will go to the farm: April 7, May 12, June 2, July 7, August 4, September 8, October 6, November 3 and December 1. Reservations are encouraged (707) 644-1373. Comments, questions or concerns regarding the Loma Vista Farm Chevys Fundraiser: chevyslomavista@sbcglobal.net
* Make a donation: tax deducible donations can be sent to:
Donation Account
Loma Vista Farm
150 Ranier Ave.
Vallejo, CA 94589

For more information on Save Loma Vista Farm, call (707) 556-8765 or email susan_dreiske@narcap.org

This is from the February 8, 2004 program of
Meet the Press.

Okay, I've got this split up into two parts and 4 parts -- in quicktime movies and MP3s.

The Parts 1 and 2s go together (The movies and audio). The 4 parters are split up more at random.

Okay this stuff should be uploaded now. Sorry for being a bonehead last night ;-)

Quicktimes In Two Parts:

Shrub On Meet The Press - Part 1 of 2 (Small - 69 MB)

Shrub On Meet The Press - Part 2 of 2 (Small - 35 MB)

MP3s in Two Parts:

Shrub On Meet The Press - Part 1 of 2 (MP3 - 44 MB)

Shrub On Meet The Press - Part 2 of 2 (MP3 - 23 MB)

Quicktimes In Four Parts:

Shrub On Meet The Press - Part 1 of 4 (Small - 25 MB)

Shrub On Meet The Press - Part 2 of 4 (Small - 32 MB)

Shrub On Meet The Press - Part 3 of 4 (Small - 25 MB)

Shrub On Meet The Press - Part 4 of 4 (Small - 24 MB)

MP3s in Four Parts:

Shrub On Meet The Press - Part 1 of 4 (MP3 - 20 MB)

Shrub On Meet The Press - Part 2 of 4 (MP3 - 32 MB)

Shrub On Meet The Press - Part 3 of 4 (MP3 - 25 MB)

Shrub On Meet The Press - Part 4 of 4 (MP3 - 17 MB)

This is from the February 10, 2004 program.

So the press are finally waking up to the fact that there are facts to support that the Shrub never reported for duty, and seemed to have gotten an honorable discharge anyway, but there are no facts to support otherwise.

These guys are finally asking questions like: "Why isn't there one person who can say he served with George W. Bush?"

Says Jon to the Press:
"What I want to know is: Where the f**k have you guys been?"

Daily Show On Shrub's Meet The Press Appearance
(Small - 4 MB)

Daily Show On Shrub's Meet The Press Appearance
(Med - 7 MB)

The Daily Show (The best news on television.)

This is from the February 9, 2004 program. (Commenting on the February 8, 2004 Meet the Press.)

The Shrub was on message, as usual. Jon created a drinking game: a shot of tequila every time the Shrub says "Terror," "Danger," or "Madman."

Here's complete
video of the Shrub's February 8, 2004 Meet The Press Interview.

Daily Show On Shrub's Meet The Press Appearance
(Small - 10 MB)
Daily Show On Shrub's Meet The Press Appearance
(Med - 18 MB)

The Daily Show (The best news on television.)

Here's
an interview that was published last month in OpenP2P.com with Brewster Khale.

"Universal Access To All Human Knowledge" is a motto of Raj Reddy from Carnegie Mellon. I found that if you really actually come to understand that statement, then that statement is possible; technologically possible to take, say, all published materials -- all books, music, video, software, web sites -- that it's actually possible to have universal access to all of that. Some for a fee, and some for free. I found that was a life-changing event for me. That is just an inspiring goal. It's the dream of the Greeks, which they embodied, with the Egyptians, in the Library of Alexandria. The idea of having all knowledge accessible.

But, of course, in the Library of Alexandria's case, you had to actually go to Alexandria. They didn't have the Internet. Well, fortunately, we not only have the storage technology to be able to store all of these materials cost-effectively, but we can make it universally available. So that's been just a fabulous goal that causes me to spring out of bed in the morning.

And it also -- when other people sort of catch on to this idea that we could actually do this -- that it helps straighten the path. You know, life, there're lots of paths that sort of wander around. But I find that having a goal that's that far out, but also doable, it helps me keep my direction, keep our organization's direction. And I'm finding that a lot of other people like that direction, as well.

Here is the full text of the interview in case the link goes bad:

http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2004/01/22/kahle.html

Brewster Kahle on the Internet Archive and People's Technology
by Lisa Rein
01/22/2004

Brewster Kahle is the founder and digital librarian for the Internet Archive (IA). He is also on the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The IA started out as just that -- a non-profit organization dedicated to taking snap shots of the entire Web every six months, in order to create a searchable archive.

One of the main goals of the Internet Archive is to provide "Universal Access to All Human Knowledge." It sounds like a lofty task, but Brewster is firmly committed to it, and truly believes that it is achievable. Anyone in his presence for five minutes or more is likely to feel the same way, because his enthusiasm is quite contagious.

Brewster started the IA in 1996 with his own money, which he earned from the sale of two separate Internet search programs: WAIS, which was bought by AOL, and Alexa Internet, which was bought by Amazon. He has been spending his own money to keep the institution going for the last six years. Recently, in the summer of 2003, he was fortunate enough to receive some grants and corporate sponsorship.

Newer IA projects include creating an open source movie archive, creating a rooftop-based WiFi network across San Francisco, creating an archive of the 2004 presidential candidates (offering every candidate unlimited storage and bandwidth to serve up video), and creating a non-profit documentary archive.
Let's Start with the Internet Archive

Lisa Rein: What's the story behind the birth of the Internet Archive? How did it start?

Brewster Kahle: The Internet Archive started in 1996, when the Internet had reached critical mass. By 1996, there was enough material on the Internet to show that this thing was the cornerstone for how people are going to be publishing. It is the people's library. People were using the Internet in a major way towards making things available, as well as for finding answers to things. And, of course, the Internet is quite fleeting. The average life of a web page is about 100 days. So if you want to have culture you can count on, you need to be able to refer to things. And if things change out from underneath you all the time, then you're in trouble. So what traditionally has happened is that there are libraries, and libraries collect up out-of-print materials and try to preserve and make open access to materials that aren't necessarily commercially viable at the moment. The Internet Archive is just a library. It just happens to be a library that mostly is composed of bits.

LR: How did you get the funding for it?

BK: The funding for the Internet Archive came originally from the success of selling a couple of Internet companies on the path towards building a library. So the original funding was from me, based on selling one company, WAIS, Inc. which was the first Internet publishing system, to America Online. And then Alexa Internet, which was a company short for "the Library of Alexandria," to try to catalog the Web. So all of these were trying to build towards the library, and these companies were sold to successful companies and so that gave me enough money to kick start the Internet Archive. At this point, it's funded by private foundations, government grants, and in-kind donations from corporations.

LR: So AOL bought WAIS and who bought Alexa?

BK: Amazon bought Alexa.

LR: What are some of the grants? Didn't you get some good grants lately, during the past year?

BK: Oh yes, we've been very fortunate in this phase of the Internet Archive's life. The Sloan Foundation gave us a significant grant towards helping get the materials up and able to be used by researchers all over the world, and the Hewlett Foundation also gave us a sizable grant to bring more digital materials from a lot of non-profit institutions to give them permanent access.

For instance, a lot of organizations create documentaries that maybe are shown once or twice, but they're not permanently available. But their general approach was to have things to be available. So by having a library be able to digitize and host these materials, we hope to bring a lot of non-profit materials up and out onto the Internet so they can be leveraged and used by people all over the world.

Brewster Kahle speaking at the O'Reilly 2003 Emerging Technology Conference in Santa Clara, CA

LR: How many people work here at the Internet Archive right now?

BK: There are 12 people full-time here at the Internet Archive -- probably 20 if you count, all told. There are a lot of people that come through. We've got a programmer from Norway and a programmer from Iceland here now. We had a programmer from Japan that sort of came through and helped intern and shared the technology that they know and also what we know.

LR: What would you tell somebody that was interested in participating somehow? You're always looking for people to work on projects, right?

BK: We're always looking for help. People are helping in many, many different ways. By curating collections. By keeping good web sites. By making sure that web sites can be archived -- is how thousands of people are helping. But people are also helping curate some of the collections that are here. We have volunteers that are helping with, oh, things like SFLan and some of the technical work that we do. But also, we are growing slowly and we are hiring a few more people -- mostly very technical.

LR: Talk about SFLan a bit.

BK: SFLan is a wireless project that is based around San Francisco. The idea is to experiment using the wireless network to do a rooftop network, to use to use commodity wireless 802.11 WiFi stuff to hop from roof to roof to roof to provide an alternative to DSL and cable for the last mile.

If we can make that both be open and have distributed ownership, then people would own the roadways and they would basically control their network, which is what the Internet really is.

LR: What do you mean by "the last mile," exactly?

BK: Trying to get the last piece from getting from a central location where there might be a fiber that comes to a city, and try to get that distributed so that people in their homes can not only get materials at video speeds, 3-5 megabits per second -- DVD-like speeds -- but also act as servers to make things available to others over the Internet at high speeds.

These are some of the things that are very difficult to do, if not impossible, with the current commercial DSL and cable providers. And we're looking to see how we can not only establish that baseline of video-ready Internet and make it so people can serve video over the Internet, but then, every year, make it better by a factor of two. So the technology follows Moore's Law just like the computer guys do, as opposed to how the telecoms tend to work, which is "here's the same thing, and you'll buy the same thing, and maybe we'll raise the price slightly ..."

LR: And keep paying more for it.

BK: Right.

LR: So you're looking for people with rooftops?

BK: We're looking for people with rooftops. And especially people that can buy a node. A node costs $1,000, and that's a little Linux box with a directional antenna.

LR: Is that a node right there?

BK: This is a node right here (gestures). So this is an SFLan box. This is a directional antenna that points upstream back to a node that's closer to the Net. This is an omni antenna. So anyone who can see this can be on the Internet for free.

And this is a Linux machine that's got a CompactFlash card as its hard drive, and two radios. And you get a wire that comes down into your house, which is the way that power is brought up to this machine. And also, you get bandwidth within your house or office.

There are about 23 of these around San Francisco on rooftops now, and we're actively deploying new software. Cliff Cox up in Oregon is doing a lot of the software development and also hardware development. He's actually the guy that sells these things for $1,000. So Internet Archive's participation is to help fund the project to get it kick-started, and to try to get some active roofs up and running.

LR: How does the Internet Archive decide about implementing new technologies? What's your philosophy about implementing new technologies?

BK: The Internet Archive is extremely pragmatic about new technologies. What we tend to do is look at the least costly, both in the short term and long term. So we are frugal to the core.

We run currently about 700 computers. They're all running Linux. We don't have any dedicated routers. We just use Linux machines. We use the same Linux machine over and over and over and over and over again. Jim Gray's model -- he calls it the "brick model." So we just use Linux machines stacked up, and even though they might be storage machines, or CPU machines, or running as a router, or running as a load balancer, or a database machine -- they're all just the same machine. What we've found is that it allows us to only have one or maybe just two systems administrators being able to scale to many hundreds and, we hope, a few thousand, machines, by having such a simple underlying hardware architecture.

Because we operate on these machines stacked up, we tend to do everything based on clusters. Because our amounts of data are fairly large. We have, oh, several hundred terabytes at this point -- three, four hundred terabytes of materials, and it's growing a lot. So it's difficult to process these if you have to go through just one machine, and a lot of proprietary software is licensed to just be on one machine, or it costs per each.

Open source has the ability that you can go and run it on as many machines as you want. Because we run things and we do data processing and conversions on ten machines or a hundred machines at once, we find that open source is often the most pragmatic, least costly way to roll. We also find that it's easiest for other people to copy our model if we use open source software, so we tend towards using open source software, because we'd like anything that we develop to be actively used by others readily and easily.

LR: How much do you test before going live with new services and things? Do you do a lot of testing?

BK: Do we do a lot of testing? I'd say we do a lot of progressive rollouts. We do testing in-house, but you can only go so far, and then you bring on some number of your users and bring things out. I'd say we're less testing-oriented. We're less service-quality oriented than a lot of places, because we're researching. We're trying to push the edge. So we try to make sure our data is safe, but if there happens to be a hiccup, we are very public about that, and we're looking for help from others to help us resolve these and find them. So I'd say we're not like a commercial company doing lots of in-house testing and rounds and rounds of beta testing, because we only have 12 people to run all of this.

LR: Can you remember a specific situation where the technology could have gone one way or the other, and you decided on a certain way over another way, and why? When there's a fork in the road, what process do you go through to decide which way to go?

BK: Boy, when there're different choices of which way to go, you find that one of the lead motivators in terms of how we decide which way to go is which way people believe it should go. People are always open to testing and pushing back and saying, "Why do you think that's true?" Especially if we've tried going down that road before.

Let's take RAID -- Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks. The idea is to run, say, four disks or eight disks as a cluster of disks so that if one fails, it has the information on the other ones, so that it doesn't fail, so you can replace the disk and be able to keep going. Every few years we think that this is the right thing to do, and every few years, we find, unfortunately, that it is the wrong thing to do.

But it doesn't seem to keep us from trying again. Every so often we think, "Okay, they must have fixed the bugs," and that the software must be more reliable, or the controllers must be more reliable, and we'll go and put some number of machines into this new structure and then watch them for six months to a year to sort of see, "Does it work better or worse than what we were using before?" With RAID, we've found with two major tests of RAID that it's been a loser.

LR: Why? What goes wrong?

BK: We're not exactly sure, but it looks like the RAID controllers are just not debugged very well. The software isn't debugged. The hardware isn't debugged. There are failure modes that fall outside of there. "Oh," (supposedly) "if one disk just goes completely corrupt, then you can replace it and everything's fine." Well, we've found out in the latest Linux release that if two disks just hiccup slightly, then it gives it up for lost and it says, "You lose all your data," and so we've had to spend months then going back and decrypting all of the Linux RAID controller file system to be able to recover all of the data that you can actually recover. So I think it's just bad implementations based on not being able to get the reliability up, based on not having enough test cases.

We go along with Hillis' Law. Danny Hillis was one of the great computer designers of all time, and his approach was to have large numbers of commodity components; that basically, price follows volume. So if things are made in more volume, the price is lower. You can say, "Duh. Obviously." But it's amazing that most people don't follow this. Particularly that the price goes down when there's more of it made. You want to use things that cost less, because you might get more gigabytes per hard drive if you're using commodity components, as opposed to specialty components.

But another corollary of this is that "reliability follows volume." That things that are made in large volume have to be more reliable, at least in the long haul, otherwise the company that's making them would go out of business because they'd have too many failures. Another way of saying that is that Toyotas are more reliable than Ferraris. Even though a Toyota might cost one-tenth as much as a Ferrari, they are probably on the road more often. The coupling of this is that if you want a reliable system, and you want one that doesn't cost that much, go for high volume, if you want it available, reliable, etc. And so we find that technologies that are commodity and made in high volumes work better.

Tomas Krag
Wireless Networks as a Low-Cost, Decentralized Alternative for the Developing World

Informal and wire.less.dk are working to promote the use of wireless technologies (mainly 802.11) in the developing world. We are planning a Wireless Roadshow to teach local technology NGOs how wireless technologies can be used to bring Internet and intranet connectivity to those parts of the world not included in the plans of the commercial telecommunications companies.

O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference
February 9-12, 2004
San Diego, CA

LR: When you say "commodity," you mean "off the shelf," or COTS products, right?

BK: Yes.

LR: Let's talk a little bit about your philosophy now. Could you discuss what you mean when you talk about "Universal Access To All Human Knowledge?"

BK: "Universal Access To All Human Knowledge" is a motto of Raj Reddy from Carnegie Mellon. I found that if you really actually come to understand that statement, then that statement is possible; technologically possible to take, say, all published materials -- all books, music, video, software, web sites -- that it's actually possible to have universal access to all of that. Some for a fee, and some for free. I found that was a life-changing event for me. That is just an inspiring goal. It's the dream of the Greeks, which they embodied, with the Egyptians, in the Library of Alexandria. The idea of having all knowledge accessible.

But, of course, in the Library of Alexandria's case, you had to actually go to Alexandria. They didn't have the Internet. Well, fortunately, we not only have the storage technology to be able to store all of these materials cost-effectively, but we can make it universally available. So that's been just a fabulous goal that causes me to spring out of bed in the morning.

And it also -- when other people sort of catch on to this idea that we could actually do this -- that it helps straighten the path. You know, life, there're lots of paths that sort of wander around. But I find that having a goal that's that far out, but also doable, it helps me keep my direction, keep our organization's direction. And I'm finding that a lot of other people like that direction, as well.

LR: Do you have an overall philosophy about technology and the direction in which you'd like to see it go?

BK: I don't really have a philosophy about technology. I have a philosophy of what future I want to live in, which is probably more of a social and cultural issue than it really is a technological issue. And socially and culturally, what I want to grow up in -- and have my kids grow up in -- is a wonderful flowering of all sorts of really wild ideas coming from all sorts of people doing diverse and interesting things.

What I'd really like to see is a world where there's no limitations on getting your creative ideas out there. That people have a platform to find their natural audience. Whether their natural audience is one person, themselves, or a hundred people, or a thousand people. Try to make it so the technologies that we develop, and the institutions we develop, make it so that people have an opportunity to flower. To live a satisfying life by providing things to others that they appreciate.

And I think our technologies right now are well-suited to doing this in the information domain. In the information domain, we can go and offer people an ability to publish without the traditional restrictions that came before, and to help, with these search engine technologies, to help them find their natural audiences. And so people out there aren't surrounded by stuff they don't want. That they find that the music recordings they want and the video recordings they want, even though they're made a half a continent away, and there are only a hundred other people that also really like that genre.

LR: What kind of projects are you working on with the Library of Congress?

BK: We've been working with the Library of Congress over the last three or four years to help archive web sites. They've got a mission to record the cultural heritage of the United States -- actually also, Thomas Jefferson gave them, more broadly, "the world." And now that publishing is moving, or a large section of publishing, is moving on to the Internet, we've been working with them as a technology partner. They do the curation, and we do some special crawls.

Our first project with them was the election in the year 2000. The presidential election. And they selected a set of web sites, and we crawled them every day to try to get a historical record, and then the Internet Archive made them available to the world to see and use, to see if it was useful to people.

The Library of Congress is trying to move into the digital realm, and they just got a hundred million dollars from Congress to help do digital preservation, and we hope to be participants as that unfolds. We'll see. But the Library of Congress has got a lot of money -- a 450-to-500-million-dollars-a-year budget. We hope that a growing percentage of that goes towards digital materials, whether working with us or others, than currently, which is I think probably less than one percent.

LR: Earlier you said that one way that people could help was to make their web sites "more archivable," basically. What does that really mean? How would you make your web site easily archivable?

BK: Boy. By being straightforward. I think by keeping things fairly simple. If web sites have sort of straightforward links, then that makes things a lot easier.

LR: What do you mean "straightforward?"

BK: Straightforward URLs. JavaScript that's fairly clear-cut or reused from other places. What we have been really stumped on is sites that need a lot of JavaScript or a lot of programs that are needed to even render the site at all.

Probably one way of finding out is going to archive.org and seeing, "Did we get it right?" the last time. We're continuously updating our tools and trying to make things better. But for instance, we've been having trouble with .swf files, Shockwave and Flash files, from Macromedia. If those files have links to other pages inside of them, we're just not able to find those links, so we can't follow them. We also have trouble rewriting those .swf files so that they point to the Archive's version of the links and not the live Web's. So we're having trouble with certain complicated web sites. What we'd like to see is more straightforward use of pointers, because the hyperlink is one of the great ideas of the Internet.

Lisa Rein is a co-founder of Creative Commons, a video blogger at On Lisa Rein's Radar, and a singer-songwriter-musican at lisarein.com.

Larry Lessig threw a party at his house Monday night for Congressional Candidate Ro Khanna.

Here's the audio and video from the party.

The files are named so you can tell what they are. They include introductions by Larry Lessig and Jeff Bleich, Ro's speech, a clip of Ro talking about the Patriot Act, and Ro conducting and Q and A session after his speech. The "all" files contain everything.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.

The FCC is holding a Decency (indecency?) hearing as a result of the Janet Jackson boob incident.

Viacom President and CEO Mel Karmazin is on now: 9:35 am.

He says that MTV and Viacom had no idea it was going to happen and apologized to everyone. "This is not acceptable and we're not defending anything on any basis of free speech."

9:42 am
He just said that all of Viacom's 39 stations are going to have a five minute video delay for all of their live programming!

The hearing has gone live on this link:

http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/Hearings/02112004hearing1200/hearing.htm#Hearing%20Webcast:

IT'S ALSO LIVE ON CSPAN RIGHT NOW.

Mary Bono (R-Hollywood) (yes, that Mary Bono) just quoted Stevie Winwood's "Dear Mr. Fantasy" Traffic's "Low Spark of High Heeled Boys" in her testimony...

the man in the suit
has just bought a new car
with the profit he made off your dreams

"hollywood's pushed the envelope too far" she says.

Now Barbara Cubin (R-wyoming) is comparing the boob incident to shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre.

Here's what someone told me was an interesting overview from 2/09/2004 from David Oxenford of Shaw-Pitman at this link:

http://www.tabtn.org/fcc.php

This just in from a tech buddy of mine.

I'm not trying to cause alarm, but if you're running Windows, how about you kinda drop everything you're doing and install the latest Microsoft security updates real quick, so you'll be prepared when this latest security hole is inevitably exploited.

Microsoft has yet another very serious security flaw that give anyone with the right know how total ccess to your computer. I don't know all the details - but it might be the biggest one yet. If you remember the SoBig virus last fall - this one will similar in that it doesn't require you to get email for you to be attacked or hacked.

I say "will be" because right now there is no virus. But the flaw is there and it will be a matter of days before someone write a virus to take advantage of the flaw. And - your anti-virus software will have no effect. Microsoft has posted a patch and that is how you protect yourself - download and install that patch.

Here's the link to Microsoft's Windows Update:

http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com

I am also asking that those of you who have blogs and newsletters and high traffic web sites post this warning on your front page and include it in your newsletters. The best defense to this virus is to stop it before it begins. As you all know - this virus will affect non-windows users in that the new viruses turn windows computer into spam robots and we are still getting the bounce messages from the last virus. Let's see if we can stop this before it starts by first - patch your computer now - then - tell everyone to patch theirs. You can cut and paste this warning into your blog or newsletter.

This is from the November 17, 2003 program.

Jon provides some nice commentary and news clips regarding the controversy over at the Alabama Supreme Court where Chief Justice Roy Moore was removed from office by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary (Vote 9-0) after he refused to remove the ten commandments monument from the State Supreme Court.

Ten Commandments In Alabama Supreme Court (Small - 5 MB)

The Daily Show (The best news on television.)

Benefit for KPFA Free Speech Radio 94.1 FM and Global Exchange

Al Franken, Paul Krugman, Kevin Phillips and Amy Goodman:

"Unraveling the Lying Liars of the Bush Dynasty"

Sunday February 18th, 7pm
Berkeley Community Theatre

$15 advance/$20 door

http://www.cityboxoffice.com

Al Franken: Author of "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look At The Right"

Paul Krugman: "The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way In The New Century"

Kevin Phillips: "American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit In The House Of Bush" (Viking Press)

Amy Goodman: Democracy Now! Radio Program

Cheney's Staff Focus of Probe
By Richard Sale for Insight.

The Feds have announced that they've got hard evidence against Cheney staff employees John Hannah and Lewis "Scooter" Libby that they were involved in the leak that outed Ambassador Joseph Wilson's CIA operative wife.

About time! Hip hip hooray and all that kinda thing!

But wait a minute! They were undoubtedly just following Cheney's orders. How come he's not being held responsible for the actions of his personal staff?

Bogus.

Federal law-enforcement officials said that they have developed hard evidence of possible criminal misconduct by two employees of Vice President Dick Cheney's office related to the unlawful exposure of a CIA officer's identity last year. The investigation, which is continuing, could lead to indictments, a Justice Department official said.

According to these sources, John Hannah and Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, were the two Cheney employees. "We believe that Hannah was the major player in this," one federal law-enforcement officer said. Calls to the vice president's office were not returned, nor did Hannah and Libby return calls.

The strategy of the FBI is to make clear to Hannah "that he faces a real possibility of doing jail time" as a way to pressure him to name superiors, one federal law-enforcement official said.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.insightmag.com/news/2004/02/17/National/Cheneys.Staff.Focus.Of.Probe-598606.shtml

Cheney's Staff Focus of Probe
Posted Feb. 5, 2004
By Richard Sale
Published: Tuesday, February 17, 2004

Federal law-enforcement officials said that they have developed hard evidence of possible criminal misconduct by two employees of Vice President Dick Cheney's office related to the unlawful exposure of a CIA officer's identity last year. The investigation, which is continuing, could lead to indictments, a Justice Department official said.

According to these sources, John Hannah and Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, were the two Cheney employees. "We believe that Hannah was the major player in this," one federal law-enforcement officer said. Calls to the vice president's office were not returned, nor did Hannah and Libby return calls.

The strategy of the FBI is to make clear to Hannah "that he faces a real possibility of doing jail time" as a way to pressure him to name superiors, one federal law-enforcement official said.

The case centers on Valerie Plame, a CIA operative then working for the weapons of mass destruction division, and her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who served as ambassador to Gabon and as a senior U.S. diplomat in Baghdad in the early 1990s. Under President Bill Clinton, he was head of African affairs until he retired in 1998, according to press accounts.

Wilson was sent by the Bush administration in March 2002 to check on an allegation made by President George W. Bush in his State of the Union address the previous winter that Iraq had sought to buy uranium from the nation of Niger. Wilson returned with a report that said the claim was "highly doubtful."

On June 12, Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus revealed that an unnamed diplomat had "given a negative report" on the claim and then, on July 6, as the Bush administration was widely accused of manipulating intelligence to get American public opinion behind a war with Iraq, Wilson published an op-ed piece in the Post in which he accused the Bush administration of "misrepresenting the facts." His piece also asked, "What else are they lying about?"

According to one administration official, "The White House was really pissed, and began to contact six journalists in order to plant stories to discredit Wilson," according to the New York Times and other accounts.

As Pincus said in a Sept. 29 radio broadcast, "The reason for putting out the story about Wilson's wife working for the CIA was to undermine the credibility of [Wilson's] mission for the agency in Niger. Wilson, as the last top diplomat in Iraq at the time of the Gulf War, had credibility beyond his knowledge of Africa, which was his specialty. So his going to Niger to check the allegation that Iraq had sought uranium there and returning to say he had no confirmation was considered very credible."

Eight days later, columnist Robert Novak wrote a column in which he named Wilson's wife and revealed she was "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction." Since Plame was working undercover, it exposed her and, in the opinion of some, ruined her usefulness and her career. It also violated a 1982 law that prohibits revealing the identity of U.S. intelligence agents.

On Oct. 7, Bush said that unauthorized disclosure of an undercover CIA officer's identity was "a criminal matter" and the Justice Department had begun its investigation into the source of the leak.

Richard Sale is an intelligence correspondent for UPI, a sister wire service of Insight magazine.

This ought to clear it up for you.
(via
Strata Lucida)

His superiority complex ought to complement his God complex quite nicely.

A few people have written me to make sure I was OK. So I thought I'd better put up a few words and let everyone know that all is well and I've just been really, really busy lately. (I'm in sort of a transitional phase right now in my life, finishing up old projects, and taking on new ones :-)

Also, alas, my camera is off getting fixed (finally). But rest assured, I ran that thing into the ground these last two months. -- I haven't been entirely asleep at the wheel. I managed to grab some good stuff. But it was all I could do to keep capturing shows while I was (am still) working on my graduate projects.

I was really trying to get a lot of work done in a short time in the end stretch there, and there was really no time to generate the files or write anything up about anything I felt like linking to. So I decided to just wait until I had time to do things right, and I just haven't had time.

I also took advantage of this month's static nature to change hosting and upgrade and reconfigure my blog at bit (including implementing some comment spam solutions -- some of which I still can't tell if they're working or not).

I've also been writing and collaborating a lot on music lately -- which can really burn up the time! But when you hear the new stuff, perhaps you will agree that it's worth a little less blogging. (But certainly a month off is over-doing it :-)

So that's it. Just wanted to check in and let you know all is well and I'll be back soon :-)

Peace.