Space Rocks are now Classified!?

I am still trying to wrap my mind around an article I read at Space.com about keeping top secret any incoming bodies that enter the Earth's atmosphere.
From the article:

For 15 years, scientists have benefited from data gleaned by U.S. classified satellites of natural fireball events in Earth's atmosphere – but no longer.A recent U.S. military policy decision now explicitly states that observations by hush-hush government spacecraft of incoming bolides and fireballs are classified secret and are not to be released, SPACE.com has learned.The satellites' main objectives include detecting nuclear bomb tests, and their characterizations of asteroids and lesser meteoroids as they crash through the atmosphere has been a byproduct data bonanza for scientists.The upshot: Space rocks that explode in the atmosphere are now classified.

Call me an idealist, but I thought the idea of advancing the human race was to have scientists and government science agencies working together to improve our understanding of foreign objects that enter our atmosphere. I guess I have been watching WAY too much Star Trek.

Over the last decade or so, hundreds of these events have been spotted by the classified satellites. Priceless observational information derived from the spacecraft were made quickly available, giving researchers such insights as time, a location, height above the surface, as well as light-curves to help pin down the amount of energy churned out from the fireballs.And in the shaky world we now live, it's nice to know that a sky-high detonation is natural versus a nuclear weapon blast.Where the space-based surveillance truly shines is over remote stretches of ocean – far away from the prospect of ground-based data collection.But all that ended within the last few months, leaving scientists blind-sided and miffed by the shift in policy. The hope is that the policy decision will be revisited and overturned.

So now scientists are left to guess how many objects enter the atmosphere at any time of the day, and at night, the public and amateur astronomers may panic and exaggerate what they saw in the night sky and scientists may not be able to accurately explain what the object was and the government would be able to but it is classified? I guess pretty soon astronomy will be a field of study in the USA that will require high level security clearance or better yet, study and practice science abroad. It will be interesting to see how other governments will classify incoming objects, will they share info with scientists or keep them in the dark too?

Here is the full ARTICLE.