Chinese government weather forecasts become top secret


2006/12/26
BEIJING, AFP



China's government, which suppresses a range of information deemed threatening to national security, now wants to keep weather forecasts from falling into the wrong hands, state press said Monday.
New regulations to take effect next year will clamp down on the illegal acquisition of Chinese meteorological information by foreigners, the China Daily newspaper reported.

The China Meteorological Administration (CMA) has identified about 20 breaches of weather security since 2000, the paper said.

"Illegal meteorological surveys and data collection have infringed China's sovereignty... and threatened the country's security," the paper quoted CMA Vice Minister Zheng Guogang as saying.

Examples of the breaches include the construction by a Japanese company of an illegal meteorological observation station around a power plant in northwest China last year, it said.

This year, a British group built an observation station near the venue for 2008 Olympic yachting events, which also is near a military harbor, in the eastern China city of Qingdao.

Originally posted by Nerdling
This was fielded in the US just after or before Katrina, I can't really remember. I know it involved former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA).

He wanted to fold civilian weather agencies into the military and to make some forecasts top secret.

Naturally it was laughed at and nothing came of it...