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From: arnold@ucsfcgl.UUCP (Ken Arnold%CGL)
Newsgroups: net.columbia,net.space
Subject: Re: Morton-Thiokol Engineering Claims
Message-ID: <798@ucsfcgl.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 19-Mar-86 17:02:18 EST
Article-I.D.: ucsfcgl.798
Posted: Wed Mar 19 17:02:18 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 21-Mar-86 06:11:08 EST
References: <1301@decwrl.DEC.COM> <758@ism780c.UUCP> <6442@utzoo.UUCP> <6494@utzoo.UUCP> <270@noscvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: arnold@ucsfcgl.UUCP (Ken Arnold)
Followup-To: net.legal
Organization: UCSF Computer Graphics Lab
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In article <270@noscvax.UUCP> rupp@noscvax.UUCP (William L. Rupp) writes:
>I like to think I would have protested more, and maybe I would have
>...  In any case, I doubt I would have gone public.  And what if the
>engineers had done so?  You ask on what grounds the government could
>have stopped them.  That's easy.  The shuttle program has very
>important national security aspects.  I would not want a situation
>where two or three engineers could ground the shuttle at any time.
>Such as during an international crisis when the shuttle might be
>needed to launch recon satellites to replace those knocked out by a
>hostile nation.  If the Feds wanted to keep those engineers from
>making a statment on TV, they could find many nice, legal ways to do
>it.

There are no nice, legal ways to stop a person from calling a reporter,
nor are there any nice, legal ways to stop publication of material
prior to publication (although there are some messy legal ways to
accomplish that).  The only way to stop someone from talking to the
press is to hold them incommunicado, which is highly illegal unless
there is real reason to suspect that a crime has already been
committed.  Note that even if it was illegal to talk to the press, you
could only stop them *once the crime was committed*.  We have not yet
degenerated to the point where you can arrest someone *before* they
commit a crime.  (We have some "conspiracy" laws which look a bit like
that, but are quite different.)

Two or three engineers could never ground the shuttle over the
objection of the President, so let's be a little real here.  In the
case of a crisis where the shuttle was vital, the President would do
so.  Of course, in any such case the Shuttle is probably a sitting duck
for any surface-to-air or air-to-air missle, since it can hardly take
evasive action, but that is neither here nor there.

Any further discussion of the legal ability of the gov't to prevent
people from talking to the press, or to get prior restraint on
publication of material, should be taken up in net.legal, where I have
forwarded followup discussion.

		Ken Arnold

P.S.  By the way, just to prevent somebody from misinterpreting what I
say, when I use the term "stop" above, as in "legal ways to stop", I
mean "prevent by legal action".  It is usually legal to convince
someone not to publish something of their own free will.