Our projects include a lot of national security-oriented topics, including Guantanamo, fusion centers, and the like. One might wonder — hell, we’ve wondered — how this intersects with our core mission to support newsgatherers. In an Information Society Project Ideas Lunch last week, Jack Balkin hit the nail on the head: the current onslaught of secrecy, under the guise of national security, is just the most recent incarnation of the desire to suppress open information. Our projects will fluctuate to respond to the realities of the day. Right now, it just so happens that terrorism is a popular excuse for keeping information under wraps, and as such, inaccessible to the newsgatherers who want to write about it.

On that note, I was thrilled to find this report on the Centre for the Freedom of the Media website. The Speaking of Terror report, drafted for the Council of Europe, outlines anti-terror laws have stifled freedom of expression and media operation in Europe. Anyone know of anything similar written about the United States? I’d love to read it.