'The Shipbreakers' (2000) is classic Langewiesche; Hong Kong ship-breaking convention enters force

William Langewiesche, 2007
Internaz via Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Journalist William Langewiesche died at age 70 in June (N.Y. Times).

I came to know Langewiesche's work through his 16 years with The Atlantic. He wrote subsequently for Vanity Fair and The New York Times Magazine. His long-form journalism, including nine books, is legendary. He tackled big, complex, and notorious subjects, such as ocean piracy and nuclear proliferation, helping readers to make sense of the world through concise and compelling prose.

Upon his passing, commentators have rushed to recommend their favorite Langewiesche works. Mine has been little mentioned, so I want to put it on the record.

For a quarter century, I have been haunted by Langewiesche's remarkable cover story for the August 2000 Atlantic, "The Shipbreakers." As The Atlantic teased:

On a six-mile stretch of beach at a place called Alang, in India, some 200 ships stand side by side in progressive stages of dissection, spilling their black innards onto the tidal flats. Here is where half the world's ships come to die—ripped apart by hand into scrap metal. Alang is a foul, desperate, and dangerous place, and a wonder of the world.

Typical of Langewiesche's work, the story sits at the intersection of many important subjects: contemporary colonialism, social and economic development, environmental protection, labor regulation, and accountability, or lack thereof, for transnational corporations. I can't board an ocean-going vessel today without feeling haunted by Langewiesche's narrative and worrying that I'm contributing to an ongoing human rights tragedy.

Horrifying conditions Langewiesche described in 2000 unfortunately continue today, human rights abuses having been abated only modestly and more in some jurisdictions than in others. Langewiesche focused on India, and Indian enforcement only pushed the most hazardous and ill regulated ship-breaking practices further into Bangladesh and Pakistan. 

There have been much needed regulatory innovations in recent years that mean to effect reform. The European Union adopted a Ship Recycling Regulation in 2013. The NGO Shipbreaking Platform wrote:

From 31 December 2018, EU-flagged commercial vessels above 500 GT must be recycled in safe and environmentally sound ship recycling facilities that are included on the European List of approved ship recycling facilities. The List was first established on 19 December 2016 and is periodically updated to add additional compliant facilities, or, alternatively, to remove facilities which have ceased to comply. Currently, the List comprises facilities operating in the EU, Turkey and US. 

Ship-breakers, Chittagong, Bangladesh, 2005
Adam Cohn via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The EU adopted the regulation after accession to the 2009 Hong Kong Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships (International Maritime Organization), which entered force just recently, on June 25, 2025. India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan also have signed on to the convention. At least, then, standards for proper ship-breaking are being articulated.

However, neither the EU regulation nor the overarching Hong Kong Convention solves the problem of jurisdictional reach to ships under flags of convenience. The shipping industry has long relied on re-flagging vessels to circumvent regulations of all kinds, and the problem remains intractable. Newly articulated standards will only work insofar as nations refuse to provide a haven for illicit ship-breaking and for its concealment by re-flagging.

Meanwhile, the cruise industry continues to burn through generations of ships in never-ending pursuit of size and extravagance.

"The Shipbreakers" was long posted in full text at Longform, but recently became unavailable there, apparently upon a change of ownership of an underlying ISP. (But archived at the time of this writing.)

Rest in peace, William Langewiesche.

Analog propaganda proves persuasive to some at 'Hanoi Hilton,' where exhibits selectively whitewash war

Hỏa Lò Prison, Hanoi
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Media illiteracy is not just an affliction of the aged.

In June, I visited Hỏa Lò Prison, also known as "the Hanoi Hilton," in Vietnam, where captured American soldiers, including the late U.S. Senator John McCain in 1967, were imprisoned during the Vietnam War.

Hỏa Lò was a prison well before the Vietnam War. The prison museum today mostly memorializes the brutal torture and execution of political prisoners at the hands of French colonial forces since the prison's 1896 construction.

Guillotine used by the French
in colonial Vietnam,
now at Hỏa Lò Prison
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The museum exhibits largely whitewash the imprisonment of Americans during the Vietnam War. Exhibits skip over the interrogation and torture of American prisoners, which conditions they were forced to deny in statements in the 1960s, but later reported (U.S. Navy, CBS News). Under international pressure, the Viet Cong improved conditions in the prison late in 1969. The museum focuses on that time and a prisoner exchange in 1973, in which McCain went home after more than five years.

Following the timeline of the prison's history through the many exhibit rooms, I came upon a group of British tourists, circa 20 years old. They were looking at an image of American soldiers playing volleyball in the prison yard. The photograph is a rather well known piece of propaganda, but it's represented in the museum as just a day in the life of "the American pilots" held at the prison.

One young woman in the group turned to her cohort. "See?" she said. "After the French treated them so horribly, this is how well they treated the Americans."

I guess history is written by the victors. 

Sometimes I lament that persons of my parents' generation, reared on Walter Cronkite, too readily believe anything they hear from a purported "news" anchor on cable TV or the internet. I wonder whether a screen-reared generation is too ready to believe anything they see on a museum wall.

I'll have a longer photo-essay on Vietnam, and the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, here at The Savory Tort on Friday, August 1.

Regulatory overhaul opens opportunity to build 'transparency by design' into federal contracting

Google Gemini CC0

Colleagues and I submitted a comment to the federal government yesterday urging recognition of the freedom of information, that is, "transparency by design," in government acquisition of information and communication technology. 

The White House has ordered the overhaul, or streamlining, of the federal procurement process, ideally through simplification of the voluminous and complex Federal Acquisition Regulation. 

The Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council is working over the regulations part by part with "deviation guidelines," allowing agencies room to depart from regulations until a proper regulatory rewrite can be accomplished—something that typically takes years—and inviting feedback on a rolling basis. Part 39, for which model deviation recently issued, covers the acquisition of information and communication technology.

The Administration's aim is a "Revolutionary FAR Overhaul" to "Restor[e] Common Sense to Federal Procurement." The government website Acquisition.gov explains (original emphasis):

Led by the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) and the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council (FAR Council), this initiative will return the FAR to its statutory roots, rewritten in plain language, and remove most non-statutory rules.  In addition, non-regulatory buying guides will provide practical strategies grounded in common sense while remaining outside the FAR.

The goal is clear: faster acquisitions, greater competition, and better results.

Naturally, there is concern by skeptics of the Administration that the overhaul is only a smokescreen to loosen the reins on corporate contractors and grease the wheels of profit off the public fisc.

Regardless of the realpolitik, the Administration at least represents that it wants transparency, which should facilitate a free market and accountability in federal contracting. Like the "DOGE" initiative, the ends are laudable, even if the means are debatable.

Thus, in the shared spirit of efficient governance, colleagues and I sought to remind the FAR Council and OFPP that FOIA already provides for access to agency records in the hands of contractors. However, the reality, exaggerated in the information age, is that public and exempt data often are so commingled as practically to preclude disclosure. At best, efficiency is compromised, wasting public resources. At worst, malfeasance is let to fester.

The problem is not new; I wrote in 2006 (page 731) about a once well known 1993 case of access to contractor data under state freedom of information law in event of a public emergency. The European Union has had a regulation in place for more than 20 years to ensure that public access to records is preserved through "transparency by design" in EU record-keeping.

Transparency by design should be a bedrock principle of government contracting at every level, especially in the information age. Politicians might disagree about what to spend public money on, but transparency and accountability after the fact is a non-partisan imperative.

Below is the full text of the Comment of Freedom of Information Scholars on FAR Overhaul part 39 (submitted July 28, 2025). My interdisciplinary co-authors are Jason R. Baron, J.D., professor of the practice at the University of Maryland College of Information; David Cuillier, Ph.D., director of the Freedom of Information Project, Brechner Center for the Advancement of the First Amendment, at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Mass Communication; Shelley Kimball, Ph.D., associate program director and senior lecturer at the Johns Hopkins Krieger School of Arts and Sciences; and Margaret Kwoka, J.D., Lawrence “Larry” Herman Professor in Law at the Moritz College of Law, The Ohio State University.

---

Comment of Scholars of Freedom of Information Law
on FAR Overhaul, Part 39
July 28, 2025

    We, the undersigned, are scholars of freedom of information law. We suggest that the federal acquisition process would benefit from recognition of agency responsibilities to comply with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. § 552, which would promote the use of technology to make fulfillment of agencies’ FOIA duties less costly and time-consuming, at a significant manpower savings to the taxpayer.

    Although the FAR, 48 C.F.R. ch. 1, provides for the inclusion of a clause in solicitations and contracts for the design, development, or operation of a system of records to accomplish an agency function subject to the Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552a (see 48 C.F.R. §§ 24.104 & 52.224-1), it appears that there is no comparable FAR provision addressing an agency’s obligation under FOIA to provide access to federal agency records. As the federal government has increased its reliance on electronic data systems, it is important, in the interest of transparency, to ensure that agencies have the means effectively and efficiently to pull information out of these systems in response to FOIA requests. One way to do that is to require federal agencies to consider their responsibilities under FOIA when they set out to acquire information technology, especially communication technology.

    In 2020, we understand that the National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) recommended to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that FAR part 39 be revised to recognize FOIA obligations. Specifically, NARA proposed, inter alia:

Agencies must ensure that contracts for designing, developing, purchasing, or operating information technology or systems, including cloud-based, and Federal or non-Federal information systems, contain requirements that facilitate FOIA processing in their system design specifications (5 U.S.C. § 552). Each agency must ensure that system design includes the following FOIA-related search and retrieval capabilities:

(1)    conduct robust searches of electronic records in response to FOIA requests;
(2)    document the search and search results; and
(3)    export the documents that result from the searches in the format the agency requires for responding to FOIA requests.

The NARA proposal was based on Recommendation 2018-03 of the FOIA Advisory Committee.  The Committee in 2018 recognized a need for “all agencies, when acquiring electronic records management software, electronic mail software, and other records related information technology, to consider features that will help facilitate the agencies’ responsibilities under FOIA to provide access to federal agency records.” Accordingly, the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) drafted a business case in FY 2019 that would modify the FAR to require access to federal agency records as a consideration in the procurement process. As stated above, NARA submitted the business case to OMB in early FY 2020 for consideration by the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council.

    Upon the occasion of the FAR overhaul process, as to part 39 and more generally, we suggest that government transparency and efficiency would be achieved by agency recognition of FOIA responsibilities at the time of acquisition of information and communication technology systems. “Transparency by design” in such systems obviates waste of government resources trying to comply with FOIA after the fact with systems ill designed to facilitate compliance. 

    We therefore recommend that the above specifications be included in the FAR revisions being contemplated, in the revised regulations themselves, in the newly contemplated Buyer’s Guides, or in both.

Respectfully submitted,

/s/ Richard J. Peltz-Steele

Richard J. Peltz-Steele, J.D.
Chancellor Professor, University of Massachusetts Law School

Jason R. Baron, J.D.
Professor of the Practice, University of Maryland College of Information

David Cuillier, Ph.D.
Director, The Freedom of Information Project, Brechner Center for the Advancement of the First Amendment, University of Florida College of Journalism and Mass Communication

Shelley Kimball, Ph.D.
Associate Program Director, Senior Lecturer, Johns Hopkins Krieger School of Arts and Sciences

Margaret Kwoka, J.D.
Lawrence “Larry” Herman Professor in Law, Moritz College of Law, The Ohio State University

Affiliations are stated for identification only, not to represent any position of the named institutions.