U.S. Justice Department vs. The People

Federal Depository Libraries house tons of documents published by the US government. Several times a year, a federal agency asks these libraries to withdraw and destroy material on its shelves. In half the cases, the reason given is that the material wasn't meant to be released, that it's for "internal use only" or "official use only."

On 22 July 2004, the Justice Dept—via the Government Printing Office—told libraries to destroy five documents on asset forfeiture, a highly controversial practice in which the authorities take people's property. (Sometimes the people have been convicted of crimes; other times they haven't even been charged with a crime.)

Unlike all the other times an order like this was issued, some librarians, libraries, and the American Library Association put up a fight. The Justice Dept's request was met with widespread derision online, and the mainstream media picked up the story. In the face of this unexpected resistance, the Justice Dept backed down eight days later. By that time, many libraries—eager to do the government's bidding—had unhesitatingly burned these public documents. If a few parties hadn't raised hell, the material would be out of public circulation forever.

And here they are, at The Memory Hole. TMH also has a collection of other documents that Libraries have been asked to destroy from 1986 to 2000.

Anybody who has read many official documents—including those making headlines in the last year or more—has seen plenty of redactions (those portions that are blacked out or otherwise made unreadable). This, we're told, is for legitimate reasons, such as "national security" or "protecting intelligence sources and methods." But now we have absolute, incontrovertible proof that the government also censors completely innocuous material simply because they don't like it.

The Justice Department tipped its hand in its ongoing legal war with the ACLU over the Patriot Act. Because the matter is so sensitive, the Justice Dept is allowed to black out those passages in the ACLU's court filings that it feels should not be publicly released.

Ostensibly, they would use their powers of censorship only to remove material that truly could jeopardize US operations. But in reality, what did they do? They blacked out a quotation from a Supreme Court decision:

"The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect 'domestic security.' Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent."

The mind reels at such a blatant abuse of power (and at the sheer chutzpah of using national security as an excuse to censor a quotation about using national security as an excuse to stifle dissent).

...Think about this the next time you see a black mark on a public document.

The censored document is here, at The Memory Hole.

The Memory Hole mission:

The Memory Hole exists to preserve and spread material that is in danger of being lost, is hard to find, or is not widely known. This includes:

• Government files
• Corporate memos
• Court documents (incl. lawsuits and transcripts)
• Police reports and eyewitness statements
• Congressional testimony
• Reports (governmental and non-governmental)
• Maps, patents, Web pages
• Photographs, video, and sound recordings
• News articles
• Books (and portions of books)

The emphasis is on material that exposes things that we're not supposed to know (or that we're supposed to forget).

If you can afford it, donate at The Memory Hole to keep this site going.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.