If there’s one thing at which our government excels, it’s obfuscating, obstructing, and even obliterating information, particularly when it doesn’t want John Q. Public to have access to that information. Even with the advent of the Freedom of Information Act, there’s a whole lot going on which we don’t know about. Some of which we perhaps shouldn’t, granted, such as matters that are truly of import to national security.

But what about all that other stuff?

Well, if you like digging in government dirt, you’re in luck. According to a recent article in Wired News, there are an ever-growing number of both Web sites and Web jockeys who are ferreting out, connecting to, publishing, and otherwise revealing all manner of government sponsored, hosted, authored, and closeted information.

The article starts out by revealing one nifty font of information that even your Aunty, google-eyed though she may be, didn’t know about: Google’s government-specific search engine. ‘Tis true. Try it yourself. Plug in just about any search terms you like, and then try the same in the regular Google search engine. Markedly different results, even for whimsical search terms. Put in some serious terms, and you can get back some serious results.

Or how about this one? George Washington University’s National Security Archive. Here Aunty found such gems as “Declassified Secrets from the U.S.-Iraq Relationship” (are they still ’secrets’ if they’ve been declassified?), “Primary sources on the War on Terrorism” (including “The Hunt for Bin Laden: Background on the Role of… [Continued]