Background The environmental literature recognizes the importance of involving multiple stakeholders in the environmental policy development process. Stakeholders include a diverse set of individuals and organizations-local citizens and community groups, consumers, environmental groups, industry; individual companies, shareholders, all levels of government and tribes, etc. In turn, each of these will have various perspectives on environmental risk, priorities, costs and benefits, etc. One area of environmental policy that has not received a lot of emphasis in the past is technology innovation. Because of this, there is limited information on how one of these key stakeholders, industry, views environmental research and technology…
Author: John Greenewald
Background The National Archives and Records Administration is releasing documents previously withheld in accordance with the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act. The vast majority of the Collection (88%) has been open in full and released to the public since the late 1990s. The records at issue are documents previously identified as assassination records, but withheld in full or withheld in part. The first release consists of 3,810 documents, including 441 formerly withheld-in-full documents and 3,369 documents formerly released with portions redacted. The Black Vault has archived the July release below, and has created a much easier index to use. The documents originated from FBI…
Background From the report: DOD’s ADM facility is to specialize in manufacturing biologics, with a focus on producing antibodies and vaccines. Until recently, the manufacture of biologic medical countermeasures has required a single facility to produce a single product (e.g., a vaccine), and extensive cleaning and sterilization of equipment was required to switch from manufacturing one product to another. However, recent technological advancements have made “flexible manufacturing” possible. These technologies include the use of disposable equipment, such as equipment for growing cell cultures in disposable plastic material systems rather than in stainless steel tanks that require more time to clean…
Background On July 2, 2014, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) posted a tweet relating to UFOs, which was, needless to say, fairly controversial. It read: Remember reports of unusual activity in the skies in the ’50s? That was us. #U2Week #UFODAY http://t.co/SOiapRR0MX pic.twitter.com/dOQjQ6ePxr — CIA (@CIA) July 2, 2014 I thought it would be interesting to see what exactly went in to the creation of this tweet. I mean, as The Black Vault can easily prove, this was definitely NOT the truth – so how could they justify posting it? There was no feasible way the CIA could account for,…
Background Many years after The Black Vault came into existence, and became known worldwide as an archive to download hundreds of thousands of government documents (including FBI Files), the FBI itself launched a section on their site that housed some FBI Files called, “The Vault.” Strange coincidence. On this site, you can download some of the FBI’s most frequently requested records. However, what I have found out, is many times it is not clear that the files being posted are incomplete. In March of 2017, I filed a FOIA request to see how the FBI determined what they would post…