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Giving bureaucrats new powers to classify even more information will have a chilling effect on freedom of speech and reverse the strides we have made toward more transparent governance.
One, cynically named the Protection of Information bill, would give the government excessively broad powers to classify information in the "national interest"; the other, which would create a "media appeals tribunal" to regulate the printed and electronic press, is written in language chillingly reminiscent of that used by the apartheid regime to defend censorship in the '70s.
This gives the government broad powers to classify almost any information involving a state agency as being in the "interests of national security".
A law giving the government sweeping powers to classify information was passed at the insistence of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in December last year.
If George Bush could sign executive orders giving contractors immunity in Iraq, executive powers to classify information to Dick Cheney, and legal loopholes to side step the Geneva Convention regarding torturing prisoners, then I think it should not be a huge issue to give legal status to people who lose their land due to climate change caused by our fossil fuel use.
Prior to the implementation of the Film Classification Act, 2005, which gave it the power to enforce ESRB ratings, the Ontario Film Review Board had used its own powers to classify Manhunt as a film and give it a "Restricted" rating, legally barring its sale to those under 18 (the ESRB had given the game a "Mature" rating).
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The agency also "monitored all patent requests concerning cryptography and had the legal power to classify any of those it deemed too powerful to fall into the public domain".
Much of the federal government already has the power to classify information.
It gives the president and the heads of government agencies the power to classify documents, as Mr. Clinton's order did, but for the first time specifically extends that power to classify to the vice president.
Because entities from the traditional intelligence community to the Environmental Protection Agency have the power to classify documents, the board would look at national security classification across the government.
If such a statute were passed, Plumer says, a president's power to classify and declassify information would be transformed into "the power to create or dissolve at will the conditions for felony prosecution.
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Justyna Jupowicz-Kozak
CEO of Professional Science Editing for Scientists @ prosciediting.com