[Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia and the politics of encryption

[George Herbert]

On Tue, Sep 3, 2013 at 5:36 AM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at fairpoint.net> wrote:

> ...
> Detailed information about construction of advanced nuclear weapons or
> ...
>


> So, while the details of material removed for legitimate security reasons
> cannot be published; ...



On point of information -

Thanks to Howard Morland, who as it happens was the same Howard Morland who
wrote the Progressive article on the Teller-Ulam thermonuclear device
concept that sparked the US v Progressive court case, we do have at least
two distinct sets of detailed information on advanced nuclear weapons, the
aforementioned Teller-Ulam information and the Swan device's basic
explosive lens principle/concept.  We had a third regarding another
specific weapon, sufficient for an expert to reconstruct the weapon design
from scratch, but it was removed (by someone else) as anecdotal reporting
by a former weapon maintainer that had no reliable sources published.

As far as I recall, there has not been anything like an organized on-wiki
effort to remove the info, nor has the Foundation done anything that I
noticed pursuant to any secret orders they might have received.

There's more self-restraint among that field's active participating crowd,
things we haven't published yet, than anything else.


We had a little kerfuffle over photos of the former head of the National
Nuclear Security Agency's Q-clearance badge, but that was as close as it
ever came to DoE or others poking their heads in here on any of these
topics...


-george