Documents in Plain Sight, but Still Classified
Source: NYT
Can a government document be both publicly available and properly classified at the same time?
That is not a Zen riddle. It is a serious question posed in a provocative lawsuit filed last year by the American Civil Liberties Union, and on Monday a federal judge said the answer was yes.
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of Federal District Court in Washington ruled that the State Department had acted correctly in withholding more than half of 23 classified diplomatic cables sought by the A.C.L.U. — all of which had been posted on the Web months earlier by WikiLeaks.
The A.C.L.U. filed what it acknowledged was a “mischievous” Freedom of Information Act request in an effort to force the government to acknowledge counterterrorism operations that it had refused to discuss on secrecy grounds and that were mentioned in the cables. The State Department, acting as if the cables were still secret, withheld 12 of the 23 cables completely and released 11 with some redactions.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/24/us/government-documents-in-plain-sight-but-still-classified.html
