Thursday, November 17, 2005

No FOIA allowed! Look out for BARDA, a new, top secret gov’t agency. (10:17 pm)

The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA) is about to become the the first-ever government agency not obligated to provide any disclosure whatsoever to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

Senate Bill 1873, which is moving quickly through congress and would appropriate $1 BILLION in 2006 alone, includes the following statement that has raised alarm: “Information that relates to the activities, working groups, and advisory boards of the BARDA shall not be subject to disclosure under section 552 of title 5, United States Code [i.e. the FOIA], unless the Secretary or Director determines that such disclosure would pose no threat to national security.”

As the Society of Professional Journalists points out, exemptions already exist for high-level national security information where FOIA requests are concerned.

Co-sponsored by Senator Richard Burr and Majority Leader Bill Frist, the bill has passed through committee and now awaits action from the full Senate.

Ostensibly, the purpose of the agency is to encourage private industry to produce countermeasures for bioterrorism agents and natural outbreaks. How can we, as citizens and journalists, have no right to know what this agency would be up to, using this much of our money?
It would be a first in our modern history, and an ominous first, at that.


For more information, check out the Center for Arms Control and Nuclear Non-Proliferation.

posted by Silja J.A. Talvi

Reader Comments

regarding S-1873: There is some thing you can do besides calling/writing your senators. The extra effort can be found at http://www.VoteToImpeach.org

History will find that this current adminstration is the MOST CORRUPT EVER and that “our” country is for sale to the higest bidder (Multinational corporations).

President Eisenhower warned about the industrial/military complex, & we as a nation chose apathy.

We need a defense budget, not a military budget. The misdirected $ spent on bases in Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, ect. can be better spent on returning this country back to “health”.  Roads, bridges, the degettoization of our inner cities, afforadable healthcare, Campain Finance Reform !

As for the troops, reassign them to the Army Corps of Engineers/Seebees. Put many under the U.N., giving teeth to a poorly under funded attempt at World cohesion.

posted by G.T.Gerrard on 11-19-05 at 3:44 PM

If you’ve found yourself subject to this sort of scrutiny, it’s time to bail ....

really

(.><.)

PS..so tell me, truthfully…does that last icon look like
1) a cross eyed idiot, in repose

or

2)  2 nipples with some rather stern cleavage

posted by minerva on 11-21-05 at 11:10 PM

Is this like an ink blot test?

I see two birds kissing.

posted by David in Canada on 11-22-05 at 12:31 AM

But seriously ... or not so much so ...

The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA) is about to become the the first-ever government agency not obligated to provide any disclosure whatsoever to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

Sounds like the lead up to a biological science fiction thriller. Except this is real. Even more thrilling. And scary too.

posted by David in Canada on 11-22-05 at 12:38 AM

I guess I’ll have to start showering more regularly and changing my underwear now that they’re keeping track, lol.

It’s funny, because I guess I’ve seen more examples of this weird scrutiny and abuse of power on a more immediate level than some people…

my daughters boyfriend from Norway (that bastion of malcontented evil doers) had to swap behind his ears at the border so that the Homeland guys could put his DNA into a data base…we just regarded this as a weird 20 minutes at the Buffalo border crossing, resulting from the sort of boredom you see in some guys who get all hyped up at a training and then are confronted with the boredom of an 11 pm to 6 am night shift job.

The last time I raked the public archives for critical information, hoping to confirm my direst conspiracy dreams, was…um…well…I guess, never.

But I’ll defend, to the death, your right to bitch about something that would take a nation of sociopaths to make really scary…and you’re not really a nation of sociopaths, eh?

Despite all appearances, and all that…..

posted by minerva on 11-22-05 at 12:53 AM

I must have bird flu…I find myself pecking people all the time now, for the most random stuff.

I’m guessing, in such a community of gossipers and navel gazers, that an outbreak of whatever would hardly be a secret…..even CNN would break away from the latest Cessna with bad landing gear, celebrity murder, or couple suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning due to bad home ventilation, to report on a bad case of Botulism, or the running squits, or Toe Jam fungus.


It’s the nature of the beast…and unless we all, spontaneously, start bleeding from our eyes from Ebola virus we’ll watch it all go down on our TV screens.

Then we can see the newsmongers gasp and spout about it until the next commercial…all in an evenings entertainment, really

posted by minerva on 11-22-05 at 1:18 AM

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