We are seeking journalists, academics, bloggers and other commentators who want to be provided with thousands of pages of G20 security documents before we publish the collection online.
It has been over a year since the G20 Summit. Researchers have spent over a year filing requests, brokering access to records, and compiling a collection of 'G20 Papers' that deal with security operations for the 2010 Summits. The fruits of this labour are already available to those wishing to follow-up with agencies involved in the G20, and people are of course welcome to do so. However, we are proposing a more organized project that will release this growing trove of documents in a way that exposes the interesting aspects held within them to the public.
We plan to first give colleagues and fellow travellers access to the whole compilation in September. But as a courtesy to the researchers and in order to increase the impact of the documents we are asking those wishing to take part to agree to a voluntary embargo on reporting the contents of these files for two months.
We hope that these two months will give the time to thoroughly read the documents, and prepare articles, videos and analysis of them. The idea of the embargo is that rather than their being piecemeal coverage, that a lot of material will be published at once giving the more widespread coverage and attention.
Then in November, the voluntary embargo will be lifted. We will be publishing the whole trove on documentcloud.org and embedding them on mediacoop.ca. We also plan to provide links to other articles based on these materials that will be published on other parts of the web.
If you are interested in being one of the people who is given advanced access to these documents keep reading for more details of how to get involved.
The 'G20 Papers' is a growing trove of documents currently consisting of 2068 pages, in 50 files, mostly from the federal government. We expect to have more documents arriving after the first batch of documents are released, and will be sending out documents to participants as the two months go on. If you have any documents you would like to have added to the G20 Papers please get in touch and let us know at g20papers [at] gmai [.] com
Some articles have already been written based on this material. There aren't a lot of smoking guns in these documents, but they do give strong insights into how Canada's security apparatus operates and there are clearly stories in them that haven't yet been told.
We hope that by making this call out for participants we will have commentary from a wider variety of perspectives and that some people will notice elements of the documents that others have missed. We also hope that this project will help to promote the Access To Information system, and encourages people to file their own request, not just on the G20, but on all manner of government activities.
If you have the time and energy to go through these documents, and you're interested in writing about the materials that are held within please fill out the following form: https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dDMwNXRDZ1FnRnVZQVBsZHZ0NW93NGc6MQ
