I hate to refer to the CIA in these pages but I found this document on world mapping to be quite surprising, if anything for being public (since 1975!!).
I have to see if they say where the nuclear weapons are hidden in irak.
It seems very useful information, I just can't bring myself to look at it as a inoffensive little book
CIA World Factbook
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Carlos, the CIA World Factbook is a kind of internet classic, useful only for checking basic, tell-it-like-it-is comparable data on different countries.
A truly more substancial and important effort/ public service undertaken by the US Administration is the publication of de-classified records under the the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA - http://foia.state.gov/AboutFOIA.asp)
that can be partially browsed from here:
http://www.usdoj.gov/04foia/other_age.htm
The George Washington University maintains a non-governmental database of some of these records here:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/index.html
And some more information on worldwide comparable efforts (and on the general subject of access to information) can be found here:
http://www.freedominfo.org/
although, to my knowledge, no other countries offer a comparable public service at this time
I thought it was a very comprehensive data to start a quick processing cross-polination map, since it follows a constant template for all countries.
but anyway, it is interesting that there has been this "contradictory" position to make a public evaluation of the world by a secret agency.
do you know if there is any political discussion following the first publications?
A flash visualization of the Factbook is shown here: (scroll down, although most of the other apps seem more interesting)
http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2006/cmsc838s/viz4all/v4a_dom.html
I can't remember where I saw something else done with it, but I'm sure I've seen it...
As to the contradiction, in principle, and in principle only, secret agencies in democratic countries must have a public face, and guarantee public access to its information as it gets de-classified (which already happened before electronic access).
Reality, of course, is more complicated, but that's another theme.
If you check some of the other sites I've mentioned, there's a lot more to it. For example, old CIA reports on the Portuguese 1974 Revolution provide great reading...
Post a Comment