As a scientist, I can imagine few things more frustrating than submitting an article for publication or filing a patent on an important discovery, only to have

As a scientist, I can imagine few things more frustrating than submitting an article for publication or filing a patent on an important discovery, only to have the work classified. In the case of these patents, they all appear to have been filed by companies that contract with the government, so the classification may have been with the assent of the researchers. Kudos to FAS for keeping watch on classification. They're perhaps the only non-government organization I'm aware of that attempts to make a list of which things are classified (the official list is, of course, classified). Without such a list, it's impossible to know whether the right things have been classified.