Tag: secrecy

Walmart, GM Lobby U.S. to Hide Import Data that Could Reveal Slave, Child Labor

The Associated Press (AP) reported Tuesday that a coalition of major U.S. companies, including Walmart and General Motors, is quietly lobbying the government to make certain import data confidential — a change that would make it much more difficult for journalists and human rights activists to link imported goods to abusive labor practices abroad, including forced labor in China’s Xinjiang province and child labor in Africa.

Human rights lawyer Martina Vandenberg called the closed-door proposals “outrageous” and said American corporations should be “ashamed that their answer to this abuse is to end transparency.”

“Curtailing access to this information will make it harder for the public to monitor a shipping industry that already functions largely in the shadows,” agreed University of British Columbia professor Peter Klein, a prominent analyst of global supply chains.

In essence, the corporate executives who make up the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee proposed “modernizing” import/export procedures in a variety of ways, one of which would make “data collected from vessel manifests confidential.”

This would frustrate the current practice of journalists using shipping manifests to determine where goods manufactured or harvested with abusive labor practices were sent, a key tactic in pressuring U.S. companies to stop allowing forced labor into their supply chains.

As the AP pointed out, this seems directly contrary to CBP’s commitment to “boost visibility into global supply chains, support ethical sourcing practices and level the playing field for domestic U.S. manufacturers.” Corporate public relations departments have also been assuring American consumers they wish to cleanse their supply chains of forced labor and child labor.

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‘What are they hiding?’: Group sues Biden and National Archives over JFK assassination records

The country’s largest online source of JFK assassination records is suing President Joe Biden and the National Archives to force the federal government to release all remaining documents related to the most mysterious murder of a U.S. president nearly 60 years ago.

The Mary Ferrell Foundation filed the federal lawsuit Wednesday one year after Biden issued a memo postponing the release of a final trove of 16,000 records assembled under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which Congress passed without opposition in response to Oliver Stone’s Oscar-nominated film “JFK.”

The JFK records act, signed by President Bill Clinton, required that the documents be made public by Oct. 26, 2017, but President Donald Trump delayed the release and kicked the can to Biden, who critics say continued the policy of federal obfuscation that has existed since Kennedy was assassinated Nov. 22, 1963, in an open motorcade at Dealey Plaza in Dallas.

“It’s high time that the government got its act together and obeyed the spirit and the letter of the law,” said the vice president of the nonpartisan Mary Ferrell Foundation, Jefferson Morley, an expert on the assassination and the CIA.

“This is about our history and our right to know it,” said Morley, the author of the JFK Facts blog.

Morley’s sentiment is shared by fellow historians, open government advocates and even some members of the Kennedy family, who usually don’t comment on the assassination.

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CDC Won’t Release Review of Post-Vaccination Heart Inflammation

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will not release its review of post-COVID-19-vaccination heart inflammation.

The CDC has been performing abstractions on reports of post-vaccination myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation, submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.

But the agency is saying that federal law prevents it from releasing the results.

The abstractions “are considered medical records which are withheld in full from disclosure,” the CDC told The Epoch Times in a recent letter, responding to a Freedom of Information Act request.

One of the exemptions in the act says that agencies can withhold materials that are “specifically exempted from disclosure by statute, if that statute (i) requires that the matters be withheld from the public in such a manner as to leave no discretion on the issue; or (ii) establishes particular criteria for withholding or refers to particular types of matters to be withheld; and (B) if enacted after the date of enactment of the OPEN FOIA Act of 2009, specifically cites to this paragraph.”

The CDC pointed to the Public Health Service Act, which was enacted in 1944, and says that vaccine injury reports and other information that may identify a person shall not be made available to any person except the person who received the vaccine or a legal representative for that person.

The information sought is available through the CDC website without details that would identify patients, the agency also said.

The CDC said that it does not have a formal definition of “abstraction” but that it means the process of reviewing medical records, including autopsy reports and death certificates, and recording data in a database. “Please note that this definition means that any abstracted data, because they originate from medical records, is also considered medical records,” a CDC records officer told The Epoch Times in an email.

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Secret societies: Harmless members-only clubs or dire threats to democracy?

“The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings.”

–        John F. Kennedy, April 27, 1961

Long before the fiction writer Dan Brown arrived on the literary scene with his stories of esoterica, people have been intrigued with the idea of secret societies working in the shadows, carrying out evil plots against them. On this score, it would be hard to beat the Freemasons.

Here is a group of characters that has piqued the imaginations of men throughout the centuries. Back in 1798, John Robison, a professor of Natural Philosophy, and Secretary to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, published a book that made a big splash throughout Europe. The publication carried the lengthy title, ‘Proofs of a Conspiracy against All the Religions and Governments of Europe, Carried on in the Secret Meetings of Freemasons, Illuminati and Reading Societies.’ Had John Robison attempted to publish such a book in our day, he would have been quickly written off as a conspiracy theorist nut job along the lines of Alex Jones. But in 1798, the book was taken quite seriously.

Robison, himself a Mason, attempted to prove that not only the French Revolution, but many other historic events of the day were the result of this secret fraternity’s machinations.

“I have seen this Association exerting itself zealously and systematically, till it has become almost irresistible: And I have seen that the most active leaders in the French Revolution were members of this Association, and conducted their first movements according to its principles, and by means of its instructions and assistance, the formerly requested and obtained. And lastly, I have seen that this Association still exists, still works in secret, and that not only several appearances among ourselves show that its emissaries are endeavoring to propagate their detestable doctrines among us…” 

Aside from the question of whether Robison was correct in his accusation is an equally important one: if the freemasons are really up to no good, are they continuing with their shenanigans today?

A lot of people believe they are, and many are speaking out with revelations of various levels of believability. Many are dismissed as conspiracy theorists (which, in turn, reinforces the belief of many others in the secret societies’ willingness to ‘throttle the truth’). Former singer-songwriter and winner of The X Factor Australia, Altiyan Childs, for example, shared a five-hour video where he proclaims that nearly every Western institution has been infiltrated by the Freemasons, to the point where it is nearly impossible to rise to high office – from the world of entertainment to politics and everything in between – without the silent nod of this international fraternity. That video has been viewed nearly four million times.

While it may be easy to laugh off such outlandish claims based on the ‘Illuminati’ and other such groups, there are other societies that make no secret about their secrecy, and have a much more tangible claim to controlling the world.

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Senate doesn’t have to release full CIA torture report, judge rules

The U.S. Senate does not have to release its full report detailing the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation and detention program following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

Journalist Shawn Musgrave sought the 6,700-page document, citing a “common law right of access” to public records. The legal argument is conceptually similar to the Freedom of Information Act. Congress is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in 2016 that the report was a congressional record. Musgrave’s legal argument was made in an attempt to get around that limitation.

Common law right of access is decided in the District of Columbia Circuit based on a two-part test that requires a determination that the document is a public record and then balancing the government’s interest in keeping the document secret against the public’s interest in disclosure.

District of Columbia District Judge Beryl Howell ruled that the report “does not qualify as a public record subject to the common law right of public access” because although it was part of the committee’s investigation, it was aimed at gathering information and did not make recommendations or propose legislation. Therefore, she said, it falls under the protections of the 1st Amendment‘s speech and debate clause protecting legislators’ speech while crafting legislation.

The government interest in keeping the information secret outweighs public interest, Howell wrote.

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Navy says all UFO videos are classified, won’t be released

Awatchdog group seeking access to unidentified flying object footage has been rejected with the unambiguous message that, due to heavy classification, none of the government’s media on UFOs will be released.

The Black Vault reported this week that starting in April 2020 it sought to acquire all “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” videos within the files of Naval Air Systems Command. Three such videos had already been leaked from government databases before being officially released by NAVAIR.

The division subsequently denied that request, citing no such videos in its possession. A request filed with the Office of Naval Intelligence was met with a similar response. 

A third request filed with the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations was finally met with a comprehensive rejection, one that said “the requested videos contain sensitive information pertaining to Unidentified Aerial Phenomena and are classified and are exempt from disclosure in their entirety.”

The agency also said: “The release of this information will harm national security as it may provide adversaries valuable information regarding Department of Defense/Navy operations, vulnerabilities, and/or capabilities. No portions of the videos can be segregated for release.”

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‘We’ll Leave No Stones Unturned’: Last Living Member of The Monkees Sues the FBI to Get Full, Unredacted File on the Iconic Rock Band

The last surviving member of The Monkees is suing the FBI for full access to the agency’s file on the legendary rock ‘n’ roll band.

George Michael Dolenz, Jr., better known by his stage name, Micky Dolenz, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Monday.

The litigation comes over a decade after the FBI’s partial file on the band was released and posted on the agency’s website in 2011.

“The television show “‘The Monkees’ is,” the popular group’s file reads before a section of redacted text in the document dated July 26, 1967.

The Los Angeles-based rock band’s file appears to be contained in a broader case file regarding the “Radio-TV Industry” in “the Hollywood area” based on an informant’s impressions. The information on The Monkees is specifically slotted under the title: “Additional Activities Denouncing the U.S. Policy in the War in Vietnam.”

“This series, which has been quite successful, features four young men who dress as ‘beatnik types’ and is geared primarily to the teenage market,” the file says. “During recent weeks, the four stars of the show have been making public appearance tours throughout the U.S.”

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Fort Worth Parents Charged Over $1,200 To See Curriculum Book Lists

Two Fort Worth, Texas, moms were charged more than $1,200 to see the public school district’s K-12 curriculum book lists, and now one mom has filed a complaint.

On August 8, Kristina Denapolis, whose daughter is in 8th grade, filed a public records request with the Fort Worth Independent School District for copies of the book lists for kindergarten through 12th grade.

She was told the request would cost an eye-popping $1,267.50 to fill.

Another Fort Worth mom, Jenny Crossland, was trying to decide where to send her daughter to kindergarten and filed the same public records request for K-12 book lists. She was given the same answer — the request would cost $1,267.50 and take 84.5 hours of labor.

On Thursday, Denapolis, who is an attorney, filed a complaint with the Texas Attorney General’s office, asking that it investigate the charge, which she said is “not reasonable,” and order the district to reduce it.

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US government finally unseals long-hidden rulings on mass surveillance

The US government has finally released previously classified rulings from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which have revealed how the secretive court interprets the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a law that allows mass surveillance of foreigners.

FISC was created by Congress in 1978 to act as a warrant court that approved the surveillance of individual foreign targets. However, after 9/11, the court’s role expanded and it started approving mass surveillance programs, some of which illegally collected data of foreigners and US citizens.

In 2015, Congress passed the USA Freedom Act, which required the government to make public all significant rulings by the FISC. However, the executive branch argued that the USA Freedom Act did not apply to FISC rulings issued before the passing of the law in 2015.

Due to this lack of transparency, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sued under the Freedom of Information Act to force the government to disclose all significant FISC rulings. The lawsuit resulted in the government releasing more than 70 FISC rulings that were previously kept secret.

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Classified 1990 UFO photograph has surfaced 32 years on

A photo taken by two men who spotted a strange object above Scotland in 1990 has finally been published.On August 4th of that year, two young chefs had been walking in the Cairngorms National Park near Perth when they spotted a strange diamond-shaped object in the sky nearby.

Terrified, the men hid behind some bushes to observe the mysterious craft.

A short time later, they heard the sound of an RAF jet approaching. The plane seemed to change course and circle the UFO for a time before returning to its original course.

Keen to take a photograph, one of the men aimed their camera at the sky and took a few snaps.

A few seconds later, the object flew upwards into the heavens and was gone.Convinced that they had seen a UFO, the men passed their best photograph along to a local newspaper, however it was promptly handed over to the Ministry of Defense and was never published.

The image would stay classified, in fact, for over 30 years until it turned out that retired RAF officer Craig Lindsay had broken protocol by stashing a copy of it inside his desk.

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