Sunday, September 12, 2010

Max Power in The Power Dome

Over the next few days, we'll be releasing more of the documents obtained from the Air Force Research Lab related to EEStor.   We've redacted the names of the persons discussing EEStor as a courtesy to them.  Their FOIA officer actually could have redacted them under personal privacy provisions we've seen invoked by other govt agencies.   I hope the Air Force Research Lab follows suit as it seems other people are now trying to file FOIA requests for these documents.  Some of these people may not be as civilized as me.  Some of these people are not civilized at all.

I don't claim to have a grand moral vision or stellar philosophy about anything.  But my approach to the use of FOIA has been to request official interviews with govt officials first.  Often this leads to nowhere.  For me, that's generally good enough although sometimes if I feel an agency has something to divulge, which they choose not to divulge, I can occasionally get a little bent out of shape.   But, I still respect the work of civil servants and so, if I make use of FOIA material, I still try to keep that in mind.    FOIA is a very important tool in our democracy but it's all a real pain in the ass to persons who have to comply with the law.    In any case,  striving for the golden mean tends to work for most things so that's typically my goal.