Secret projects hobbyists and US law enforcement agencies

[Triton]

Do we risk investigation by US law enforcement agencies pursuing our hobby of research into unbuilt military and space projects? The documents that we are accessing are unclassified. But it does make me wonder sometimes researching things like hyper velocity guns or EM catapults.

 

[flateric]

surely not in my case
in your case, if you are not involved in classified work and not scanning secret documents or posting classified or NOFOR ppt's at the forum for just having a fun - you are out of sight, too

 

[Triton]

My post was generated by an article on the Slashdot blog titled "NASA Contractors Censoring Saturn V Info". The article claims that Saturn V cutaway posters at Kennedy Space Center are being shredded to comply with International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).

The blog claims that our own Orionblamblam was put on notice concerning violation of ITAR for his Aerospace Projects Review and his Saturn documentation.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/30/0215204&from=rss

Is the author of this blog full of excrement? Or do we have some overzealous retarded G-men who fear John Q. Hobbyist?

Can Orionblamblam comment on what happened?

ITAR description at wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITAR

"Orionblamblam in the coils of ITAR" thread at this forum:
http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,2213.msg18643.html#msg18643

Just wondering if there is any cause for concern considering some of the intellects in the United States government and the times in which we live.

 

[flateric]

It's two years old news already. Scott already have said all he wanted to say about those idiots.

 

[Triton]

Is International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) the possible reason that formerly available unclassified technical reports are disappearing from the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) server?

 

[Orionblamblam]

Is International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) the possible reason that formerly available unclassified technical reports are disappearing from the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) server?

That's a bit of a mystery. They have "improved" the DTIC website and database; it could well be that the long proud history of simply screwing up when fixing something that already works continues.

 

[Triton]

Is International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) the possible reason that formerly available unclassified technical reports are disappearing from the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) server?

That's a bit of a mystery. They have "improved" the DTIC website and database; it could well be that the long proud history of simply screwing up when fixing something that already works continues.

Thank you for your response Orionblamblam. You hear stories about them shredding Saturn V cutaway posters at the Kennedy Space Center and you begin to wonder if some nucklehead is removing unclassified documents in the name of security.

 

[AeroJadeXG]

here's one for you: I've had the opportunity to do a little work with NASA through my university, and it turns out that THEY are missing many of the important engineering documents regarding much of the Apollo program, for example. These people are amazing: they're hypersensitive to information release to the point that they are actually causing serious lapses in documentation for NASA employees looking into engineering solutions for problems we already solved. What, are the terrorists going to set up a bomb on the moon to throw off the tides and ruin my spring break? You figure a terrorist (or China) could do a lot better with a few billion than reproduce Apollo.

 

[Skybolt]

If you look at the archival source of many of the NTRS-published NASA documents, you'll find that they come from outside NASA. Even universities' archives. So, probably is the same old bureucratic messing up.