[MilCom] All Hands Message: NGA Publications Going Away - Take Action Now!

[Larry Van Horn, N5FPW]

First many thanks to James Nelson for posting the latest on the NGA FLIP 
publication withdraw. Folks this fight is not over. To those of you who 
wrote the NGA during the cvomment period, many many thanks. It appears they 
heard us but decided to ignore us anyway. Since that tactic did not work we 
have one more option in our arsenal, the one place they get their money 
from -- Congress.

Folks I would highly recommend to each of you to write a letter to your 
Congressman. First we had the 86 ECPA and the other anti-scanner legislation 
to fight nd now we have this afront to our monitoring hobby. If we put the 
right pressure on we can stop this insanity. If the Australians aren't 
happy, fine restrict the PAA Sup. But to withdraw the entire collection we 
the taxpayer paid for, nope that is the dumbest thing I have seen since the 
pet rock.

Please gents, I encourage each of you, write (don't email) your Washington 
Reps. Ask that this process be stopped. Demand as a taxpayer that these 
piblications remain in the public domain. Be sure to send along a copy of 
the press release. Time to take action now our loose one of our best 
resources.

And if you really want to make a difference, send along a copy of your 
letter to the NGA so they know that we know anout the stupidty of this 
decision.

Take action now or loose it all in October 2007.

Chief

Larry Van Horn, N5FPW
MT Milcom/Help Desk Columnist
Assistant Editor Monitoring Times
Milcom Founding Father


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James Nelson" <jnelson_lifesaver at yahoo.com>
To: <milcom at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 9:07 PM
Subject: [MilCom] NGA Publications


> This is an excerpt from Steven Aftergood's Secrecy
> Newsletter talking about withdrawing the NIMA products
> from public access...
>
> PUBLIC ACCESS TO AERONAUTICAL DATA WILL BE BLOCKED
>
> Extensive databases of aeronautical information that
> have long been
> publicly available will be withdrawn from public
> access next year, a
> U.S. intelligence agency said yesterday.
>
> "The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)
> will go forward
> with its previously announced proposal to remove its
> Flight
> Information Publications (FLIP) and Digital
> Aeronautical Flight
> Information File (DAFIF) from public access,"
> according to an NGA
> news release issued on November 29.
>
> NGA said that copyright concerns raised by foreign
> data sources were
> the driving factor for the decision to withhold the
> information from
> the public.
>
> Proponents of public access argued that the move was
> unnecessarily
> restrictive in its scope.
>
> It sets "a very bad precedent" when "the introduction
> of any
> copyright-protected material renders a massive
> public-domain
> database off-limits to the public," said one subject
> matter expert
> who requested anonymity because he works with NGA.
> "Many, many
> other databases are at stake."
>
> "The decision that NGA should have taken, in my view,
> was to have
> offered a redacted version of the databases for public
> sale.  DAFIF
> -- a really big database -- could easily have been
> stripped of its
> Australian-supplied [copyrighted] data and kept public
> and
> available," he told Secrecy News.
>
> The data withdrawal will be begin in January 2006 and
> will be
> completed in October 2007.
>
> The NGA did not approve another proposal to withdraw
> certain paper
> maps from public access.
>
> "NGA has decided not to withdraw paper map products to
> a scale of
> 1:250,000 to 1:5,000,000.  These products will
> continue to be
> available to the public," the news release stated.
>
> The industry expert welcomed that decision.  But he
> said that "the
> unstated reality is that NGA has mostly turned off the
> oxygen to
> cartographic production, so few new maps are being
> prepared as
> digital masters and even fewer are being sent to the
> printing
> press."
>
> The NGA proposal to withdraw public access to
> aeronautical data,
> which was originally announced in November 2004, drew
> "numerous
> comments ... from private citizens and special
> interests groups."
>
> See "NGA to Go Forward with Proposal to Remove
> Aeronautical Data from
> Public Access," NGA news release, November 29:
>
>
> http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2005/11/nga112905.html
>
>
>
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