More than 13 million declassified CIA documents online: full-text search


    The declassified archive of CIA documents (right) and only four computers from which it was possible to access information (left).

    Some laws are very inconvenient for crooks who want to hide information. Therefore, they comply with the requirements of the law, but resort to “innocent sabotage” in order to minimize damage. For example, in Russia, information about tenders was entered into the open register with the replacement of Cyrillic characters with Latin ones , so that they could be difficult to find with an ordinary search. Intelligence agencies in the United States are also masters of creative departure from the implementation of laws, formally observing them. Just appreciate the talent of the CIA. According to the Freedom of Information ActFrom December 31, 2006, the Central Intelligence Agency is obliged to remove the security classification from documents older than 25 years and ensure free access to them. The CIA formally fulfilled the requirement of the law: it created a database of declassified documents CREST (CIA Records Search Tool) and organized “free” access to it through ... four computers in the building of the branch of the National Archives in College Park, pc. Maryland , which is open to the public from 9:00 to 17:00. Here the scouts have a clear omission: according to the CIA logic, it was necessary to limit the time of the archive, for example, from 7:00 to 7:10 on one day a week.

    Such chaos lasted until the present time. In the end, justice prevailed. Since January 2017, the entire database of declassified documents CREST is open on the Internetc full-text search - check the search for cities and regional centers of Russia, the names of scientists, names of drugs, etc. Now everything really works as expected. All information is open.

    Every year, by December 31, CIA officers fill up the CREST database with new declassified documents older than 25 years, having previously performed the necessary editing (removing fragments from documents that remain subject to state secrets). For example, on December 31, 2016, the base contained all documents from the time the CIA was founded in 1947 until December 31, 1991. The only problem was that the real general public was not able to access these documents.

    The situation was taken to fix the activists from the non-profit project MuckRock. They seek to force state bodies to transparency, accountability to the people and respect for their own laws.

    In June 2014, MuckRock activists sued the CIA, demanding to provide free access to the CREST database, as well as to various metadata associated with this database.

    The trials were not easy. CIA lawyers tried to delay the process in every possible way. For example, in 2015 they filed a petition that it took six years to publish documents. This is despite the fact that all documents are digitized and available in the National Library. There was not only a web interface to access them.

    It got to the point that in 2016 one of the activists Michael Best launched a fundraiseron Kickstarter to go to the library and manually scan all documents that the CIA refuses to put on the Internet, although they are declassified by law. Why scan? Because according to the rules of the library, users were not allowed to save already scanned documents on a USB flash drive or other storage media. You could only print them! If you want to lay out documents for public viewing, the only way was to go to the library, print a digital document, and then scan it again - and publish it.

    So the CIA formally complied with Bill Clinton's decree on declassifying information. Technically, documents are available - the presidential decree is executed. In practice, of the 13 million declassified documents for all the years of the existence of the CREST database, just over 1 million documents were printed, and only a small fraction of them were digitized and published on the Internet.

    Fortunately, Michael Brest did not have to implement his crazy plan to scan 13 million documents, because the CIA still lost the court. In October 2016, it became clear that intelligence officers would be forced to upload a database to the Internet.

    On November 18, 2016, the CIA lawyers officially threw out the white flag and promised that from I quarter. 2017 will open online access to the CREST database and will periodically replenish it. The official CIA commitment is given incourt document .



    In January 2017, the CIA began to fulfill obligations . On the official site opened full-text search database . At the moment, the server does not withstand the influx of visitors and sometimes gives errors when trying to search. It can be seen, the qualification of IT specialists in the CIA is not very high. Or was it conceived?

    It is not entirely clear how many documents are available through the online form at the moment, but in the end, there must appear all over 13 million declassified documents of the CIA, and every year a new replenishment. At the end of 2017 will lay out the documents for 1992 and so on.

    In addition to access to the entire database, the CIA even published several collections of documents: on the Berlin tunnel , withreviews of scientific studies of Soviet scientists , according to the rules of spy secrets , on the project Stargate (experiments with extransens), etc. For the key word "keyhole" you can find some interesting photos from spy satellites.

    At the forums they express the opinion that it is desirable to quickly download and publish declassified documents to the torrent, while the new administration of the President of the United States has not covered access to the database.

    Also popular now: