Government Secrecy for the Birds

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaFrance ordered the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to make its entire bird strike database available to the public. "Public disclosure is our job," LaHood wrote on his official blog. "The sea change in government transparency is beginning, and we are happy to be a part of it." Portions of the database have been publicly available since the information was first collected in 1990, but the public is now able to access all of the database's fields. The FAA withdrew its proposal to suppress the data “after determining that it can release the data without jeopardizing aviation safety.” However, the U.S. aviation agency redacted a very small amount of data in the database containing privacy information, such as personal phone numbers.