If you want to know something as simple as who heads the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, don’t bother to ask the safety agency’s communications office. Without special permission, officials there are no longer allowed to provide information to reporters except on a background basis, which means it cannot be attributed to a spokesman. —NY Times reporter Christopher Jensen writing on his blog in "What’s Off the Record at N.H.T.S.A.? Almost Everything"

Jensen continues,

The agency’s new policy effectively means that some of the world’s top safety researchers are no longer allowed to talk to reporters or to be freely quoted about automotive safety issues that affect pretty much everybody.

Clearly the Times reporter has not considered what terrorists might do if they could get their hands on this information. I'd tell you, but then I'd be compromising your security, wouldn't I?

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Tags: * National Highway Traffic Safety Administration NHTSA government secrecy information control media control