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CIA makes public its role in 1953 Iran coup. iPad app soon follows
In a news and FOIA coup (pardon the pun), Malcolm Byrne at the National Security Archive recently announced that the CIA declassified and released documents confirming their role in the 1953 Iran Coup that overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq (more news coverage here). This adds information to the already informative National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book #28 "Secret CIA History of the Iran Coup 1953." And now, hot on the heels of this amazing disclosure, Cognito Comics has just released the CIA Operation Ajax Interactive Graphic Novel for iPad and iPhone (with Android coming soon). Check it out! Continue reading
Tauberer et al publish best practices for making government data “license-free”
Back in May, we posted about the Obama Administration's executive order on open government data and cited Govtrack.us's Josh Tauberer's analysis of the Executive Order as missing the mark and being confused -- if not downright misleading -- about "open licensing." Continue reading
Hot off the presses: NDSA National Agenda for Digital Stewardship
The inaugural National Agenda for Digital Stewardship has just been released in conjunction with the first day of the Digital Preservation 2013 meeting in Washington, D.C. (so wish I were there!).
While the report admits that "it has become increasingly difficult to adequately preserve valuable digital content because of a complex set of interrelated societal, technological, financial, and organizational pressures," it's great to see this call for community effort that especially speaks to the need to preserve digital government records.
Executive Summary (PDF, 889 KB)
Full Document (PDF, 1.07 MB) Continue reading
Want to help make FOIA requests easier and faster? Chip in to FOIAmachine kickstarter
The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) has a KickStarter campaign to raise money to build FOIAmachine. What's FOIA you ask? Find out more about [w:Freedom of Information Act] (FOIA). FOIAmachine will help journalists, researchers and the public submit FOIA requests, track their progress through the Federal government bureaucracy, and post documents from successful FOIA requests online for public access. While they've made their original goal, they're looking to stretch it in order to build out additional features and host open records training in 5 states. I'm a backer and you should be too. You've got 3 days to help CIR meet their goal and help make FOIAmachine a reality.
GovernmentAttic releases 16 FOIA’d reports by the Defense Intelligence Agency
According to this story on /., the GovernmentAttic website has just published a dossier of reports produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency describing biological weapons development in nations throughout the world.
"These sixteen documents comprise a set of U.S. Army Medical Intelligence reports from the 1970s and 1980s concerning the extent of research into and deployment of biological and chemical weapons activities in various nations. These reports were requested under Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR), administratively processed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and released by the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM)."be sure to take a look at the GovernmentAttic, they've got a ton of FOIA'd and very interesting publications available. Continue reading
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