Science and Secrecy

[jporter]

The hyper-secretive US National Security Agency –
the government’s eavesdropping arm - appears to
be having its patent applications increasingly blocked
by the Pentagon. And the grounds for this are for reasons
of national security, reveals information obtained under
a freedom of information request.

Most Western governments can prevent the granting
(and therefore publishing) of patents on inventions
deemed to contain sensitive information of use to an
enemy or terrorists. They do so by issuing a secrecy order
barring publication and even discussion of certain inventions.

(...)

This creeping secrecy is all the more surprising because
as the US government's eavesdropping and code-breaking
arm - which is thought to harness some of the world’s most
powerful supercomputers to decode intercepted communications -
the NSA will have detailed knowledge of what should be
kept secret and what should not. So it is unlikely to file patents
that give away secrets.....

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8223

jody

Later than usual one summer morning in 1984, Zoyd Wheeler
drifted awake in sunlight through a creeping fig that hung in
the window, with a squadron of blue jays...