Federation of American Scientists

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The Federation of American Scientists ( FAS ; German  Association of American Scientists ) was founded in 1945 by employees of the Manhattan Project .

Goals and activity

The FAS regards the promotion of the humane use of science and technology in the nuclear age as its main objective . It also focuses on national security issues in the United States of America . To this end, it conducts a wide range of research and teaching projects, including in the following areas:

In addition, the tasks of the FAS extend to questions of housing construction (especially with regard to energy efficiency ), energy policy as a whole and education . The Information Technologies Project of the FAS aims, according to their own admission, to advance the research and development of new information technologies and to make their possibilities usable for teaching and learning.

management

The first general secretary was the physicist William (Willy) A. Higinbotham . He is considered to be the inventor of the very first video game - Tennis for Two (1958). The atomic physicist Charles D. Ferguson has been President of the FAS since January 1, 2010 . The FAS is also headed by a board of directors made up of renowned scientists. 60 Nobel Prize winners from various fields support the efforts of the FAS as sponsors .

Controversy

The politically explosive "Project on Government Secrecy", which is critical of the US government's secrecy policy, is headed by Steven Aftergood . As part of this project, FAS regularly publishes the Secrecy News , a free newsletter that provides information on how governments, armed forces and security services in the USA and abroad deal with information relevant to the public. A great success of the FAS efforts was the release of information about the budget of the US intelligence agencies. On the occasion of the worldwide dissemination of state secrets by Wikileaks, FAS intervened increasingly in the discussion about the security interests of the state and the public's need for information. Aftergood condemned the irresponsible handling of confidential information by Wikileaks employees.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ David E. Kaplan: Secrecy Under Scrutiny in USNews of March 12, 2006 (English)
  2. ↑ Wikileaks Fails “Due Diligence” Review by Steven Aftergood, June 28, 2010 (English)