Navy fights to keep explosives data secret from residents

[LeighAnn]

Source: Bellingham (Washington) Herald

<snip>

It's been six months since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down part of the Navy's grounds for rejecting Milner's public records request under the federal Freedom of Information Act. Milner's victory was a significant test for public disclosure, and it reined in the expanding use of an exemption that originally was conceived to protect personnel information such as salaries and job evaluations.


Yet Milner, of Lake Forest Park, Wash., may never see that Navy data.

The Department of Defense is in back in U.S. District Court in Seattle, where it's pursuing its second legal argument. The Navy contends that its information is covered under a FOIA exemption for law-enforcement records. Milner and his attorney, David Mann, dismiss the claim as a stretch.

The two men fear, however, that the Navy ultimately may get its way: The 2012 defense authorization bill that's wending through the Senate contains a provision that would permit the Pentagon to withhold sensitive but unclassified infrastructure data, exactly the kind of information the Navy says it's being asked to divulge

Read more: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2011/09/13/2183538/navy-fights-to-keep-explosives.html

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They've been trying for eight years to find out how big of an explosion could be triggered by an accident or an attack at the Navy munitions depot on Indian Island, WA

[montanacowboy]

1. Guess everyone will find out when it happens

that's our transparent government working for us

[GreenStormCloud]

2. He is asking to know how much ammunition the base has.

I can understand why to Navy doesn't want to tell how much ammo they have. No military ever does.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

3. Amounts alone will not get that for them

What is there is barely half the data needed. How it is stored, how often things come and go, other safeguards are all part of the picture and you are not going to get those via a FOIA request.

[buckrogers1965]

4. You can not have a democracy

if the government can keep secrets from it's citizens.