Respectfully disagree.
All information that is posted to ftp.nifc.gov must be:
- Public: Information that is non-sensitive, unclassified, not copyrighted, and viewable by everyone.
If you two guys think you're on to some secret stash that wasn't intended to be public, then I don't know what to tell you. Besides, I'd hardly call a few clowns reading RadioReference to be "widespread dissemination". The average American doesn't have the attention span required to review a 45 page IAP.
I respectfully disagree too. I'm a retired U.S. Forest Service employee. The federal government has come down hard on state websites that include federal frequencies. Take a look at the publically available FIRESCOPE communications guidelines, all the federal frequencies are redacted. Try to find a copy of Cal Fire's statewide load that lists a lot of federal frequencies, you can't find it anymore. NIFC has put out memos to state and local agencies saying that federal frequencies listed on state and local sites and documents are not to be released publically. There is direction stated that the files in the link you provided are not to save copies of IAP's there. Look at the federal incident files on there, I did. Not one of them has any IAP files. I found one or two over the past 2-3 years that someone filed there by mistake. They are gone the next day. When NIFC gets wind of Cal Fire having posted their IAP's and NIFC cache frequencies on the comm plan, I'm betting they come down on Cal Fire for it. The best way for NIFC to find this out is to post the link you did.
As a retired USFS employee who was involved in incident management, claim and personnel misconduct investigation and was a forest protection officer, I have sources to some documents. I would be pretty foolish to post these on Radio Reference. Nearly everything I get has this statement on it "FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY *The information is under Controlled, Unclassified Information//Basic." Other documents often say that "This information is not releasable under the FOIA." The FOIA is the federal Freedom of Information Act. I've been around this situation since 1974, my second season with the U.S. Forest Service. Since I've retired I read every dispatcher's annual workshop notes. Many have discussions regarding this very topic, directing those in the room to go home and check the access to every document that has federal frequencies on it. The state doesn't do the same thing, because their frequency use is on FCC licenses, which is completely, in all but some limited circumstances, public information. President Reagan made NTIA records unavailable to the public back in the early 80's. After 9/11 there has been increasing emphasis on not making federal frequency info available. I had links to get the Northwest GACC frequency directory for about 10 years. Some RR member posted those links, they were gone inside of a week. Now I can't get that directory anymore. It took a lot of time and work to find it in the first place. I had 4-5 similar links I had been using for many years, someone on RR posted them after they found them. They are all gone now.
You may not think that someone posting on Radio Reference does not get noticed by the powers that be. I disagree, it is the largest source of frequency info in the U.S. and in some places internationally. That and a few of my experiences, as stated above, give me a different perspective than you. I also worked for one of the NIFC partner agencies and visited NIFC for training.
The FTP website says what you says it does, but it also says: "This ftp service is intended for
short-term interagency sharing, not as a file archive or records repository." When federal frequencies get posted on it they will disappear at some point. I can't remember a year when Cal Fire has used the NIFC system as much as it has this year. Once NIFC finds out there are likely going to be new guidelines for the site next year. NIFC built a super secure server that some USFS employees that qualify can access. This was being built around 2015-2018 as I remember. I think you will see all IAP links disappear from the FTP site.
I don't know what familiarity you have with the wildland fire agencies or NIFC. I'll bet mine is more extensive. I'm not saying that in a "mine is bigger than yours" way, I'm just saying my perspective is likely different than yours.
