Tag: secrecy

Growing secrecy limits government accountability

When I started covering crime as a reporter for small newspapers in the 1980s, I was assigned to walk to the police department lobby each morning and look through all of the previous day’s police reports, clipped to a board on the counter, containing all the details laid out for anyone to see. We were able to report to the community each day on the major events in town – to explain why people heard sirens, or saw a smoke plume.

By the 1990s, the clipboards were moved out of the lobby, so we asked at the counter to see them. Then we were told we had to review them with the sergeant on duty. Then we were told we couldn’t see them – we had to ask the police what they felt was newsworthy. Then we were told to submit a public records request, and wait for days or weeks – if we got them at all.

For decades, journalists and civic activists have lamented the increasing secrecy of government – the times, they were denied government information, particularly from public records requests. Reports have shown secrecy getting worse at the federal, state and local government levels.

But those were usually anecdotal reports of problems. Now, there is data that brings those refusals into focus and which provides a fuller picture of government agencies hiding their work from the public they ostensibly serve.

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Secret RCMP report warns Canadians may revolt once they realize how broke they are

A secret RCMP report is warning the federal government that Canada may descend into civil unrest once citizens realize the hopelessness of their economic situation.

“The coming period of recession will … accelerate the decline in living standards that the younger generations have already witnessed compared to earlier generations,” reads the report, entitled Whole-of-Government Five-Year Trends for Canada.

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“For example, many Canadians under 35 are unlikely ever to be able to buy a place to live,” it adds.

The report, labelled secret, is intended as a piece of “special operational information” to be distributed only within the RCMP and among “decision-makers” in the federal government.

A heavily redacted version was made public as a result of an access to information request filed by Matt Malone, an assistant professor of law at British Columbia’s Thompson Rivers University, and an expert in government secrecy.

Describing itself in an introduction as a “scanning exercise,” the report is intended to highlight trends in both Canada and abroad “that could have a significant effect on the Canadian government and the RCMP.”

Right from the get-go, the report authors warn that whatever Canada’s current situation, it “will probably deteriorate further in the next five years.”

In addition to worsening living standards, the RCMP also warns of a future increasingly defined by unpredictable weather and seasonal catastrophes, such as wildfires and flooding. Most notably, report authors warn of Canada facing “increasing pressure to cede Arctic territory.”

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Veteran paratrooper reveals British special forces recovered a downed ‘non-human’ craft in northern England in late 1980s – supporting recent US whistleblowers’ claims of a secret UFO crash retrieval program

British special forces recovered a downed ‘non-human’ craft in northern England in the late 1980s, a former UK paratrooper and military intelligence officer claims.

Franc Milburn, a veteran of the British Army’s elite Parachute Regiment, tells DailyMail.com he has spoken with a member of the MI6-run unit that conducted the alleged operation.

Milburn said he also spoke to UK Royal Air Force crew who chased and fired on a pair of ‘disc-shaped’ UFOs that traveled at hypersonic speeds outstripping their fighter jets.

Milburn refused to reveal the identity of his former elite comrade, citing security and his desire to remain anonymous. DailyMail.com will refer to him using the alias ‘John.’

But in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, Milburn divulged eye-popping details of the story told to him by his ex-Special Forces friend after both had left the Army – saying that he wanted to support recent US whistleblowers’ claims of a secret UFO crash retrieval program.

Milburn said that in the 1980s John worked for a reported secret unit now known as the ‘E Squadron’, which specialized in covert, clandestine, and paramilitary operations.

E Squadron, previously called ‘The Increment’, recruited the most experienced and reliable operators from the UK’s Special Forces units: the Special Air Service (SAS), Special Boat Service (SBS) and Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR).

The US equivalent to E Squadron is the CIA’s Special Operations Group and Joint Special Operations Command, staffed from ‘Tier-1’ units including Delta Force and SEAL Team 6.

Milburn said John served in the 1982 Falklands War and on numerous high-risk missions around the world, but one of the most disturbing was in his home country in the late 1980s.

‘He told me they were deployed in a troop-sized unit, maybe 20-30 Special Forces operators,’ Milburn said. 

‘They’d been told by the RAF [Royal Air Force] that a craft which wasn’t Russian, British, or American had been downed.

‘He said they were tasked to secure and retrieve the craft in the north of England. They were flown in by helicopter. They established a cordon, a perimeter, and they approached the craft.

‘He didn’t describe the craft, he just said it was obvious it was non-human, and it was obvious that there were occupants who had fled the scene on foot – or whatever you call it.

‘He said then it became a task of tracking down these beings to try to bring them into custody.

‘Part of the unit was left protecting the craft. They would have left maybe six to eight blokes to cordon the craft, and the others would have been on foot, quad bikes, or 4x4s trying to track down these entities that escaped from it, with helicopters supporting.

‘He said after that it was totally passed over. He said, “scientists and technicians came in and it was completely out of our hands. We were flown away by helicopter, and we knew nothing more after that.”‘

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CDC Finally Releases 148 Page Study on Myocarditis Following COVID Vaccine – And EVERY SINGLE WORD is Redacted!

Zachary Stieber, a reporter with the Epoch Times, released the CDC report on the frequency of myocarditis following the COVID vaccines.

Zachary posted the FOIAed documents here.

Every single page was redacted!

EVERY SINGLE WORD!

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Without More Accountability, Sunshine Laws Are Toothless

This week is Sunshine Week, an annual celebration of transparency laws, which means that government press offices across the country are hard at work pretending they don’t spend the other 51 weeks a year undermining those transparency laws.

If you want to see what your leaders really think of you and your statutory right to know what they’re up to, just ask them to comply with the open government laws on the books.

Two Florida Department of Law Enforcement officers claimed earlier this month that Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office blocked the release of DeSantis’ publicly-funded travel records and retaliated against them for arguing that the records were public under the state’s Sunshine Law.

As I wrote last year for Reason‘s special issue on Florida, politicians have been chipping away at the state’s vaunted public records law for decades, but DeSantis and his allies in the Florida Legislature are taking a sledgehammer to it.

Elsewhere in the Sunshine State, a fire chief called the police because a local reporter had the temerity to insist, correctly, that he had a legal right to inspect public records in person. Tampa Bay Times reporter Jason Garcia showed up at the headquarters of the Tampa Fire Rescue Department asking to see paperwork related to a firefighter’s termination. Florida’s Sunshine Law law is unambiguous on this point: “All state, county and municipal records are open for personal inspection and copying by any person.”

Nevertheless, two department employees, one of whom was the personnel chief, argued Garcia had no right to see the records since he’d already filed a records request online. Eventually, Tampa fire chief Barbara Tripp called the police to report Garcia for causing a disturbance, although he left by the time reinforcements arrived to end his reign of terror.

The personnel chief claimed in a memo that Garcia “persisted in being argumentative and repetitive and refused to accept the answer and leave.” 

“No matter how you want to spin it, though, journalists are supposed to ask questions and seek explanations,” the Tampa Bay Times wrote in an editorial about the alleged hullabaloo. “That may rankle people in power, but it doesn’t constitute an unruly disturbance.”

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CIA Document Talks About “Flying Saucers” Traveling 7,400+MPH in 1955; More Information Discovered Yet Withheld By Agency

The Black Vault attempted to get a CIA document that has been shrouded in secrecy for decades further declassified. Although no redactions were lifted in the process, it revealed that even more information by the CIA is withheld on a UFO case that suggests a technology beyond known human capability at the time.

Originally disclosed in 1978, the “Information Report” originally classified “Confidential” has a subject header of “Unusual Flying Object Sightings and Attendant Scientific Activity”. It had multiple, but relatively minimal, redactions when the single page was originally released. In January 2020, The Black Vault filed a Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) case, seeking to uncover more details and get those redactions lifted.

The document, identified as REPORT NO. 00-B-93674, details an intriguing account from a source in Hungary, who in the winter of 1955 received a letter mentioning the mysterious “flying saucers”. These objects, described as “very fast speeding flyers,” were estimated to be traveling at a speed of “12,000 kilometers per hour,” or in excess of 7,400 miles per hour.

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COULD GERMANY START WWIII? Leaked Audio Unveils Military Bombshell

A shocking revelation about Germany’s military plans is shaking the geopolitical landscape: A leaked audio recording exposes a chilling conversation among top-ranking military officials regarding a potential operation to bomb the Crimean Bridge in Russia with Taurus missiles.

Worse yet, the recorded voices, one of whom is Lieutenant General Ingo Gerhartz – the commander of the national Air Force himself, stress that Germany’s involvement in the attack must be concealed from the public.

The recording, initially dismissed by some as mere propaganda, has been confirmed as authentic by the highest echelons of the German government.

Russian officials demand swift answers from Berlin, labeling the leaked conversation as evidence of direct German complicity in acts of aggression against Russia. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov scorns NATO, suggesting a glaring betrayal of trust, while former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev condemns Germany as a resurfaced adversary. He released a brutal statement on Telegram:

“After all, our eternal opponents, the Germans, have again turned into sworn enemies.“

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China wants to rid itself of Western tech by 2027 — outlines domestic alternatives in ‘Document 79’

The WSJ reports that China is on an extensive push to drive out Western tech companies from the country and replace them with domestic alternatives. China reportedly started its domestic expansion in 2022 with a highly secretive “Document 79,” an initiative focused on deleting Western tech companies from the country. Since then, China’s new plan has been in full effect — domestic alternatives have replaced most Western software providers.

When initiated two years ago, Document 79 was a super sensitive document that only high-ranking officials were purportedly shown. Security was so paramount that copies of the document were not allowed to be made. The initiative set out by Document 79 is to replace foreign software in China’s IT systems by 2027, with state-owned firms required to provide quarterly updates on their progress in replacing foreign software with domestic alternatives.

Two years later, the fruits of Document 79 are now apparent. Microsoft, HP Enterprise, and Cisco’s market share in China has fallen drastically in the past several years. In 2018,  HP Enterprise had a 14.1% market share in China, but in 2023, that has fallen to just 4%. Cisco’s market share has halved in the past five years down to just 8%. Microsoft’s Chinese sales today account for just 1.5% of the company’s overall sales.

Most government institutions in China are now buying domestic technology over Western solutions, even if the Western solutions are superior due to Document 79. This includes everything from software to hardware solutions. Chinese customers who were buying IBM-powered rack-mount servers five years ago are now requesting Chinese-made rack-mount servers utilizing Huawei chips.

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Chinese Rocket’s Moon Collision in 2022 Carried Mystery Object, Experts Say

The surface of the Moon is littered with defunct hardware from past missions that are now buried amongst the lunar regolith. A recent crash site left a distinct and curious mark, creating two impact craters of equal size. Scientists examining the collision believe that there may have been an undisclosed object that crashed on the Moon, the origins of which will remain a mystery.

On March 4, 2022, a wayward rocket booster slammed onto the Moon’s surface. Prior to impact, it was believed to belong to a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that was left in high orbit in 2015, but further investigation revealed that it was actually a booster launched by China in 2014 as part of its lunar exploration program. That said, the space mystery continued as the booster created two craters upon impact, causing scientists to question what exactly crashed on the Moon that day.

A group of researchers from the University of Arizona had been tracking the object’s trajectory for seven years prior to its unfortunate crash, as well as its impact site on the Moon. In a paper published Thursday in The Planetary Science Journal, researchers analyzed the rocket’s light reflection signature and its movement through space. Based on the observed characteristics, the researchers propose it was indeed a booster from China’s Chang’e 5-T1 mission, but one carrying a mystery payload that also met its demise on the lunar surface.

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Biden administration ADMITS flying 320,000 migrants secretly into the U.S. to reduce the number of crossings at the border has national security ‘vulnerabilities’

Joe Biden‘s administration has admitted transporting migrants on secret flights into the U.S. and lawyers for its immigration agencies claim revealing the locations could create national security ‘vulnerabilities’. 

Customs and Border Protection has refused to disclose information about a program last year secretly arranging flights for thousands of undocumented immigrants from foreign airports directly to U.S. cities. 

It means that while record numbers of migrants were flowing over the southern border last year, the Biden White House was also directly transporting them into the country.

Use of a cell phone app has allowed for the near undetected arrival by air of 320,000 aliens with no legal rights to enter the United States.

It comes after a controversy over a 2022 transportation program in which the administration used taxpayers money to move migrants throughout the country on overnight flights. 

Included in details of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit first reported by Todd Bensman, the Center for Immigration Studies found Biden’s CBP approved the latest secretive flights that transported hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from foreign countries into at least 43 different American airports from January through December 2023.

The program was part of Biden’s expansion of the CBP One app, which kicked off at the start of last year.

Migrants were able, under Biden’s expansion, to apply for asylum using the app from their home countries.

But the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) notes that the transportation of these migrants directly to the U.S. is one of the lesser known uses of the app.

Aliens who cannot legally enter the U.S. use CBP One to apply for travel authorization and temporary humanitarian release from those airports.

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