Invention Secrecy Activity Rises Slightly
A total of 5,784 patent applications remained subject to invention secrecy orders at the end of Fiscal Year 17, according to new data provided by the US Patent and Trademark Office. The secrecy orders,...
View ArticleThe Expanding Secrecy of the Afghanistan War
Last year, dozens of categories of previously unclassified information about Afghan military forces were designated as classified, making it more difficult to publicly track the progress of the war in...
View ArticleGrowing Pentagon Secrecy Draws Questions
In just the last few weeks and months, U.S. military officials imposed new restrictions on media interviews and base visits, at least temporarily; they blocked (but later permitted) publication of...
View ArticleInvention Secrecy Hits Recent High
Last year the number of patent applications that were subject to a “secrecy order” under the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951 was the highest that it has been in more than two decades, according to data...
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Widespread Blurring of Satellite Images Reveals Secret Facilities
Want to know how to make a satellite imagery analyst instantly curious about something? Blur it out. Google Earth occasionally does this at the request of governments that want to keep prying eyes away...
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Israel’s Official Map Replaces Military Bases with Fake Farms and Deserts
Somewhat unexpectedly, a blog post that I wrote last week caught fire internationally. On Monday, I reported that Yandex Maps—Russia’s equivalent to Google Maps—had inadvertently revealed over 300...
View ArticleTrump Says DoD IG Reports Should Be “Private”
The recurring dispute over the appropriate degree of secrecy in the Department of Defense arose in a new form last week when President Trump said that certain audits and investigations that are...
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Pentagon Slams Door On Nuclear Weapons Stockpile Transparency
By Hans M. Kristensen The Pentagon has decided not to disclose the current number of nuclear weapons in the Defense Department’s nuclear weapons stockpile. The decision, which came as a denial of a...
View ArticleCarter Page: Corruption Can Erode Secrecy Authority
Corruption in the executive branch diminishes the ability of federal agencies to preserve secrecy, wrote a then-21 year old named Carter Page in 1993 when he was a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy....
View ArticlePatents Granted to Two Formerly Secret Inventions
Two patent applications that had been subject to “secrecy orders” under the Invention Secrecy Act for years or decades were finally granted patents and publicly disclosed in 2016. “Only two patents...
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