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Cost of Secrecy Continues to Increase
xerid writes "The Associated Press is running an article about the increasing costs of government secrecy. The information stems from a report (PDF Warning) posted at OpenTheGovernment.org. From the article: 'The government is withholding more information than ever from the public and expanding ways of shrouding data. Last year, federal agencies spent a record $148 creating and storing new secrets for each $1 spent declassifying old secrets, a coalition of watchdog groups reported Saturday. That's a $28 jump from 2003 when $120 was spent to keep secrets for every $1 spent revealing them.'"
$148! I can't believe the government spent that little on anything.
OK, here is the deal. Keeping secrets is simple for one reason: You have to fact check each new bit of classified information with a whole database of older information in order to decide whether or not something has bearing. It is often easier to simply start classifying everything that *might* have some bearing on national security than it is to actually go looking all of the time. So, what we are left with is an increasingly chaotic and poorly indexed "database" of national security "secrets" that are costing the taxpayer more and more to maintain and data mine. The problem of over exuberance with classification of documents is simply that costs of declassification to preserve history start spiraling out of control.
The thing that absolutely amazed me has been investigating my Grandfathers history. Many of his records going back to WWII are still classified and it was only a few years ago that he had certain medals delivered to his family after the declassification of other records. Of course it is likely that they do not have any real bearing on todays issues, and nobody likely checks them anymore against new issues, but the amount of history that is being kept away from American citizens is stunning. I am not saying that declassification is easy. Quite the contrary, it takes skilled analysis to sit down and go through documents line by line and word for word while retaining a comprehensive knowledge of current and past events that may or may not have bearing on the request.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I hope people will wake up and realize what a bad mistake it was to elect Bush... twice!@!@$
Face it, our form of government is not democracy, but rather a form of kleptocracy. And that's just the start of what they're covering up ...
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
... the secrets keep *YOU*!
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
Maybe because all the other information we can use to measure it is secret? ;)
In the pdf is a graph of year vs. number of declassified and classified pages. The Clinton years are the only years since 1980 where more pages were declassified than new pages classified.
The correlation is so strong that it makes me think there's a lot more that we should be able to learn from that graph. Perhaps there are correlations between businesses owned primarily by Repubs vs. businesses owned primarily by Dems. Perhaps there are correlations with watchdog groups which try to keep the government in line. Perhaps there are correlations with specific lobbying groups and law enforcement agencies.
There's also a graph on secrecy orders issued vs. secrecy orders rescinded with respect to patents. Apparently this was a much more popular maneuver in the late 80s than it is today. It makes me wonder if that system may have become stagnant and no longer serves the purpose which it was created for.
I like graphs.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
With so many of the government services running on Windows, it comes as no surprise that the cost of keeping secrets secret is ever increasing.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Its not the man, its the system.
You need to get over your irrational dislike for the sitting president, regardless of your excuses.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The article is a little off (and, not surprising, given the site it's on).
'cost of creating secrets' is NOT the same as 'cost of keeping secrets'. They're comparing apples to oranges.
Of COURSE creating a secret is more expensive. Because.. you're both creating the information, AND trying to keep it secret. Telling people what you know (revealing the secret) is pittance compared to the time and effort doing the research for something that is to be KEPT secret.
Sheesh!
Irrational? Maybe you have a short memory but do remember how the USA was doing before Bush was elected? Is it really so long ago that you don't remember how far you've falled in those 5 short years?!
i am only supporting OpenSource/GPLed governments...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
... feel the need to hide behind secrecy.
If they could be proud, they would be loud.
Project on Government Secrecy http://www.fas.org/sgp/
Words to men, as air to birds.
Lets take the example that was listed in one of the links and see what the big deal is. The USMC came across some bad body armor. Some state its the result of using the bottom bidder. Others state that people need to know this. Both sides have valid points, but now consider this: Our enemies get a hold of just exactly how that body armor is flawed and use that against our men and women deployed. You can use your imagination from there. If it is classified, it is usually done for a reason that people who apply that classification know about. If they justified every application of a classification, why have secrets at all.
Maybe I will have others disagree with me. Fine, my response is not all inclusive just something to chew on.
that keeping secrets is too expensive so he weaving such a web of deceit it becomes impossible to tell the truth from a lie.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Put the two together: You don't pay for the old/bought software and no one can read the file formats that it produced ... perfect, cheap secrecy.
They might get taken more seriously if they edited their report better...
Sorry to nitpick.
-j00When all you have is a hammer, everybody looks like a Messiah.
What seems to be misunderstood is the reason why information is classified. Information is protected because of the sensitivity of the source that provides that information, whether is be HUMINT, satelite, etc. In many cases, our source of information with regard to our enemies is dependent on no more than one solid source. If that source is lost, or the knowledge of the capability is revealed to others, our intelligence would be compromised. Classified information is eligible for review and release every 25 years with some exceptions. If, after 25 years however, the source used in the original intelligence is still active and in use, the information will not be released as present and future operations couuld be compromised. A perfect example of this is Google's Talent(imagery) satellite. If I know that every 6 months, Google will task the satellite to fly over my neighborhood, and that that satellite has the ability to zoom in a sign on my lawn, I will just move the sign until the satellite goes over and then put it back out. Our collection methods are much the same. Once the enemy knows they are there and what they can do they will either: 1. kill the source 2. hide their stuff or try to deceive us 3. change the way they communicate and opperate. It isn't the information that is so important, but the platform by which it is collected.
How can you tell that the situation is better or worse from the provided data? If you read the first posts, you will notice that this data doesn't really mean very much. These posts haven't been modded flamebait for attacking Bush, they've been modded down for not making sense!
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
It might be a bit of a shock, but I'm afraid pride didn't make the list.
Duhhh, bigger society means bigger government using modern communications tech. Yeah, I'd say the govenment cranks out 148X more info today than it dis previously. Maybe in 50 years folks will say the govet is spending $148 on declassifying legacy info for every $1480 spent generating new info.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Possibly the whole state bureaucracy, whole state machine is just like a Windows installation. It degrades over time and at some point you have to re-install from scratch.
gallons per parsec
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
I don't know, but if we can get the cost for keeping secrets, doesn't that mean that we probably know the secrets? I mean, it can't be that well kept of a secret if we know how much they are paying to keep it. I'd say the number is off. That was phrased very awkwardly, but that's what I'm sticking with.
-Magiluke
Earl Grey, Hot.
This is a bad comparison because it costs more to print a classified page and shred it than to print an unclassified page. Duh.
i thought it was supposed to be secret?
TO PROTECT NATIONAL INTERESTS.
Go read the ACLU website to see just what the goverment is trying to keep secret, especially with their new tool, the National Security Letter.
I'm sorry, but it's simply a truth that the current administration is far more secretive than most.
Try reading this book if you want reams and reams of proof.
And look up Executive Order 13233, to start. Whether or not these specific classification/declassification statistics are accurate, Bush's presidency is one of the most secretive, stonewalling, etc. etc. to date.
Don't let the figures fool you.
The real figure is $3:$1.
The other $123 went towards buying the hammers and wrenches that they claim to spend $500 for - which they don't - those $500 aren't spent on the hammers and wrenches - it is actually used towards funding the stuff that they are trying to keep secret in the first place.
It shouldn't be much of a secret though that the secret is this crazy scheme of keeping secrets.
Got it?
i keep secrets for free. these "secrets" they are paying $148 for will get leaked. they need to find a new secret keeper.
My UID is a palindrome, that must be good for some type of prize.
I had an opportunity to speak with an FBI man whose job it was to certify people for security clearance. The man is a world traveller, interviewing personally as many people as he could to get an idea of how trustworthy the candidate would be.
When I asked him about these interviews, he said he didn't bother with the telephone, but went right to the interviewee and looked them in the eyes. He told me he recently went to Elko, Nevada to go down into the mine to talk with the candidate's former co-workers. He also mentioned that if the candidate had spent time overseas, then the process becomes very complicated and time consuming.
Now, that sounds like a very expensive process to me. It seems from the article that this cost would not be included (it doesn't say specifically, but it only mentions documents), but it certainly would be a related cost.
Another (unrelated) point:
From the article:"...and the inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina shows the public needs to know what could happen in their communities and what the response plans are..."
What? Is it just me or did someone just drop the name Katrina to increase the emotional blow of his tirade? I don't see the connection. Are these response plans a secret? Is the possibility of a hurricane on the Gulf Coast some kind of NSA classified information?
I probably sound sarcastic, but if there is anyone who could enlighten me on this, let me know.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
...that it costs more to develope new technology than it does to release the technology you've developed...
:-/
even if they didn't try to keep a given technology secret, it would still cost them more to develope it, than it would to release it.
then if you add in the cost of activly performing a task (ie keeping certain information secret) vs the cost of not performing a task, of course its going to be more expensive to perform a task, when the alternate option is simply not performing the task...
its like acting surprised that it costs more to go and buy a tv, than it does to not go and buy a tv
Clearly one can classify almost everything, but this will have major economic costs eventually. If your society competes with an open society which does not pay secrecy costs, execpt on a few things it does not want you to know about, can your society survive?
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Maybe they should look into spending that money on upgrading the national security networks to protect the government systems more carefully. Especially as digital threats to government installations are becoming more and more of a risk. As seen on slashdot about korean and chinese crackers/hackers etc.
"In the pdf is a graph of year vs. number of declassified and classified pages. The Clinton years are the only years since 1980 where more pages were declassified than new pages classified."
I think there's a strong correlation to the end of the cold war and the lack of understanding of the magnitude of terrorist threats with the trend you've noticed.
Vote for Pedro
I bet some of it was the Cold War, at least the bit on patents. Didn't need to broadcast that
Company X discovery new thingy Z which probably had absolutely no real effect on the fact that both countries were ready to "glass" one another.
But I think there is definitely a Republican/Democrat thing going on. And Clinton was actually fairly centrist. All hail FOIA.
I think you need to go back to school and learn about the delay between action and reaction.
Today we mostly are experiencing the results of the Clinton fiscal policy. ( effects of the current war not included of course as those effects are felt faster then normal fiscal changes )
Much as the Clinton years enjoyed the results of Regan's polices.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I just can't at all.
Is Sweden still as open as it was in the 80's?
Some years ago, I read (in official info, received from the Swedish Institute) that
almost EVERYTHING produced by a Swedish gov't dep't, authority, etc. is freely
available for public access.
http://www.si.se/templates/StartPage.aspx?id=3
If that link has died/changed, pick your language at the top of the site at:
http://www.si.se/
There used to be an SI Fact Sheet (or 3) on all of this, but I couldn't find it
after 8 minutes at SI's web site...
(Perhaps Sep 11th has changed Sweden's openness? 'hope not...)
Surprisingly enough, openness applied even to such sacred cows (in other lands)
as [most of] the Prime Minister's mail & [most] individual's tax records (useful,
after all, to family-tree researchers).
While living/working in the Kingdom of Sweden over 5 chilly "winters," I tested the latter
claim... walking into the local tax office (Lokallaskattemindigheten, from memory...)
and - in English - asked to use the Office's "public computer terminal" - still speaking
English.
In about 5 minutes, whoever was using a computer terminal finished and I was escorted
inside, to a place with 2 or 3 computer terminals. A "Public (ie, limited / read-only)
Access" card was sweeped-in, for my terminal, and I was given practically unlimited access
(in time spent at the computer terminal).
Of course, I had to know enough Swedish to be able to understand the prompts & commands
needed to get to some sample data records, by my own & some few friends' and colleagues'
data.
I understand that only the names of children born out of wedlock would have been hidden
from me; also, data may be hidden at certain points in the processing cycle (eg, before
it is verified as accurate?)
The only cost became payable only if I had wanted to print out some of the date I found
(rather than copy into my notes, by hand).
(I wonder if - today - one could use digital cameras to photograph data while displayed
on screens, or - better - whether USB-disks can be used to gether much more information
in a more convenient & useful manner...? Does anyone know?)
The openness was said to go far beyond the example mentioned above...
Any publicly-funded report was to be freely available - on request - at various depart-
mental libraries.
Even corporate libraries could be pursuaded to loan some of their materials (via Inter-
Library Loan arrangements) to individual borrowers, in the community.
The idea was, I understand, that an informed public was a basic tenet of [Social] Democracy.
I didn't happen to stumble on any reports on the costs of supplying such information, or
of not providing it.
Has anyone got up-to-date info on how it is in Sweden today?
( cf: http://www.sweden.se/ for gen'l info )
TO PROTECT THE ACLU'S INTERESTS.
Go read the ACLU website, to see what kind of paranoia they are trying to stir up, to make payments on the expensive new copier at National Headquarters.
resigned
I dare say that a) you haven't read anything on the web site, and b) you have no idea what the NSL entails.
....from the public is the real reason why 9/11 happened.
... the Pentagon and .... The white Horse... uh house...
....just where are the WMD iraq was supposed to have? What about the weapons of mass destruction of wrongful world economic manipulation?
What is amazing is that there is plenty enough information publicly available that anyone with half a brain that comes across this information and most important, the ability to think for themselves.... Well it'll be obvious and undeniable.
And yes, the government has spent more to cover it up than what it'd cost to simply present the already public information in relative context via the major media.
For example, how much did it cost the Government to create the anthrax letter threat against the News Media while probably paying someone a good deal to do it in such a manner to assure disconnection from the government.... and of course it was determined to have come from a US based US military base....as there had to be just the right amount of connection to properly threaten the media..
So in regard to a trillion dollars... that's clearly enough money for anyone to notice that money like that doesn't just appear from nowhere and then vanish back into nowhere...
The players... Minimum investment... 1 billion... enron, worldcome, etc... were the obvious losers. The winners... easy come easy go.... the dot com boom and bust was on the winners side.... needing a place to invest the winfall....
World Trade Center (not the first attempt to bring it down!!!)
Politically controlled military to back a wrongful world stock market manipulation.
Don't believe me?
Do a google Search on "Trillion dollar bet" and read the transcript.
Screw others and you will fear and suffer revenge...and in the process perhaps get overly aggressive in your paranoia
China wasn't effected because they don't play the stock market....
There is more!!!
What the World Wants is not obscene war spendings...but real solutions to real world problems And we do have the knowledge, manpower and natural resources to do it.
So why is it not happening?
Ben Franklin "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
And FDR used it in his "four freedoms" speech..
Of course it cost more to keep up with your lies, because telling the truth is just plain without the need for spending extra energy in keeping the lies in order..
"since nobody wants to be the one who releases data that turns out to help an enemy launch the next Pearl Harbor or 9/11 attack."
Whoa, dude. Tell me again about this pearl harbor attack?
Yep. Sheer ignorance. It's terrible how ignorant people who disagree with you are. And a shame you don't have the far-reaching power to 'educate' them.
resigned
Never mind how many dollars it costs to get or give secrets. What about how many *lives*?
C|N>K
[cough]crackpot[/cough]
Both sides have valid points, but now consider this: Our enemies get a hold of just exactly how that body armor is flawed and use that against our men and women deployed.
.pdf where the body armor was mentioned, it says that after the results were attained through the FOIA and was going to be released in newspapers, the government reversed the decision and recalled the faulty body armor.
They already have been using this flaw against us simply by shooting and killing our soldiers! The flaw exists regardless of whether or not it is publicized. Do you think the bullets have to know that the armor failed ballistic tests before they can penetrate it?
The only reason to keep that information secret is to avoid political embarassment at the expense of soldiers' safety.
In the
Thus freeing the information actually resulted in our soldiers being safer because they are no longer saddled with equipment that won't protect them!
This is completely typical of the way this war has been fought. Decisions that endanger our soldiers are made, and either concealed or backed up with bullshit. Guess what? Reality doesn't care what story you tell to cover your bad decision; your soldiers still die. But the cover up is never about making our soldiers safer anyway. It's about politics. Our war is being run by politics, and politics is the opposite of reality. War is not.
The enemies of Democracy are
I'm sorry, but it's simply a truth that the current administration is far more secretive than most.
Most? How about at the height of either World War, or the Cold War? Nonsense. And it's a simple truth that the very nature and volume of the information that the government produces and processes - including while performing vital and extremely sensitive duties - is exploding. It's not as much paperwork, but more data. What's a secure document to you? A cc of an e-mail? Depends on where you work and what you do within that structure.
And, of course, we're now dealing with entirely new requirements for counter-espionage. Follow some of the recent coverage of how loosely, poorly, incorrectly, or not classified stuff is now being mined by teams of Chinese hackers to stitch together a wider and deeper understanding of all sorts of capabilities, techniques, and strategies on our part. That sort of thing is completely changing the info security landscape, and the need to secure it.
Saying that one administration is working in the White House while the many pieces of the government that have to worry about security act to avoid leaks that tip off bad guys to things like communications capabilities, networks with other diplomatic partners, business partnerships in countries where such relationships are priceless to US interests but slow to appeal to some elements in those countries... all the while forgetting that these practices (and necessesities) have some inertia (from LONG before the current administration), and are impacted by new developments (the internet, as it relates to international relations and espionage, just for one... or only-semi-friendly relationships with newly IT-oriented countries like China... or newly networked/digitized agencies and government operations across the board), well - it's apples and oranges, comparing the current moment in time with any other.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I love how quickly and easily all of the myriad failings of the Clinton administration in the area of intelligence, and all the times they classified information, are conveniently forgotten and the sum total of all use, abuse, and misuse of classification quickly and hypocritically glossed over and forgotten.
Let us not forget that Mr. Habitrail for Humanity, President Jimmy Carter, went from claiming he saw a UFO and if elected he'd declassify anything and everything on the subject and promptly acted as though he never saw anything or said anything from the moment of his first preparatory intelligence briefing.
Exactly how much stuff did he declassify about Area 51, Lockheed's skunkworks, experimental aircraft development, etc? Oh yeah, NONE. To this day, it is still Shoot to Kill territory out there. If there's no need for classification, then why is that classified?
For that matter, during that period when the leftist Democrats were supposed to be so much more Soviet-friendly than anyone else and more commited to unilateral defense self-destruction, what of our nation's nuclear weapons program was declassified and released?
There are reasons, for whatever the party or politics of the administration, for classification and secrets. There are things that exist in this world, things which have happened, which if the public of the country and the world knew would lead to upheval and damage worse than anything we suffer by not knowing.
I can think of a dozen things in my own life I wish I'd never known and for which I won't sleep well ever again. But for those with even a shred of conscience, the price of knowledge of some things is to be forever peturbed by them and the only release is death. I feel for those who have to keep those secrets who can never again know ignorance.
For the shallow out there who need everything as an irreverent joke, consider what you'd give to never have seen your dad step naked out of the shower or your mother's c-section scar or your grandmother needing a sponge bath. Some things you just don't need to know or see.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Don't feel sad, that last post easily surpasses their arrogance and spices it with more than a hint of low self-esteem. Sounds as if you'll always be too smart to learn anything you don't already know.
Steps for submitting an article on Slashdot:
1) Figure out what you want people to believe.
(The government is hoarding secrets!)
2) Find the single figure that appears to most severely support your position.
($148 spent classifying secrets per $1 spent declassifying secrets.)
3) Hope nobody notices that your figure is utter bullshit.
paintball
Last year, federal agencies spent a record $148 creating and storing new secrets for each $1 spent declassifying old secrets.
I guess it costs more money to make paper and write on it than it does to hand out existing documents.
And from the article:
Overall, the government spent $7.2 billion in 2004 stamping 15.6 million documents "top secret," "secret" or "confidential." That almost doubled the 8.6 million new documents classified as recently as 2001.
That's some expensive ink. Maybe they should refill their cartriges... oh wait, that's against the law now.
I have yet to find in the article or any link provided in the summary as to how this magic figure is relevant.
"These numbers show we are going in the wrong direction,"
How do the numbers show this? Why is it the wrong direction? To me, it sounds like a group of people agasint government classification of information just spewing arbitrary facts to their liking, and formulating some sort of conclusion out of it that supports their biased oppinions.
Does this MIT Institute have any relation to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology?
Laws are for people with no friends.
If they aren't doing anything wrong, then what does the government have to hide?
--jeff++
ipv6 is my vpn
You've got an open invitation to our table.
Classifying something costs a lot more than declassifying it. To classify something, you get the data, then have to figure out whether to classify it. We're even so far. But then you have to protect the data, and there's an associated cost with that. Add to all that security clearance procedures,and it gets pretty expensive really fast.
Just the process of getting a security clearance is expensive. For the low level clearances, it isn't that expensive. They just check you against terrorist lists, check your criminal history, and call up the people you list. When you start applying for higher clearances, they personally interview people, and that's when it starts getting expensive: you're paying for the lodging and travel for the FBI guy, his salary, and all the bureaucratic nonsense that goes along with it.
What you're talking about is security through obscurity. It has its place, but it's much less effective than true security. (In this example, true security might be attained by replacing the flawed body armor.)
The problem with security through obscurity is that it's not very hard to crack -- and once it's broken, it's broken completely and serves only to fool the practitioner into thinking he has some security left.
I'd tell you why the government spends so much on keeping secrets, but it's classified.
Because everyone knows that the government would have generously given that money to the needy people otherwise...
When people think "protecting government secrets" they immediately jump to Hollywood spy movie scenarios, not realizing that such a classification encompasses almost everything imaginable in government these days. Hell, I wouldn't be suprised if you need a clearance to clean the toilets at the Department of Agriculture.
following the money works far better than your tinfoil hat dillusion.
anyone.
I can keep a secret
I'm thinking it likely had to do with the fact that the Committee on Government Secrecy was enacted during that period, following the end of the cold war, leading to the 25 year rule and the release of tons of material previously marked as secret.
:P
From Wikipedia: In 1994 it was estimated that the United States Government had over 1.5 billion pages of classified material that was 25 years old and older.
And if we want to stretch things a bit, i guess we could give Clinton credit for creating this commission (though the only creation reference I have found so far is that it was created by congress, not the president)...
Unfortunatly, Clinton replaced the previous executive order on classification with Executive Order 12958 which, from the way it sounds in Wikipedia, actually drastically increased the number of people that could mark something as secret. Give it a little time to ramp up to speed and for govt. employees and contractors to get used to their new found powers, and suddenly we have growth again.
The funniest thing is, knowing how things play out in some office atmospheres (and the number of people with the capability to classify material), theres probably a monthly pool going on in more than one place on who can classify the most stuff in a month or who can classify the most mundane piece of informaiton ever...we're going to get to this stuff in 25 years and find out someone classified their greasy post-it note with a lunch order on it...
Whee signature.
For the shallow out there who need everything as an irreverent joke, consider what you'd give to never have seen your dad step naked out of the shower or your mother's c-section scar or your grandmother needing a sponge bath. Some things you just don't need to know or see.
This is the pure essence of the Wrong kind of thinking. It is FEAR and the need to control that which causes fear.
There isn't a SINGLE thing I would rather not have known in my life. --And I have seen and know some extraordinarily horrible things; I know how bad the dark side can get.
Guess what? This does not take away from my ability to love and to shine and to exist in a joyful state. KNOWLEDGE is what makes people strong and able; knowledge gives you the option to choose and to overcome your little quirks of weakness. --To seek out your inner patches of darkness and destroy them.
Seeing your father naked? Seeing scar tissue on your mother? Why is your father's body frightening to you? He's human like everybody else. You should love and honor him regardless of whether he is clothed or naked. Your mother's scar tissue is evidence of great trials she had to go through. How can you not be proud of her for that? Your parents are people, and they are not perfect and their journeys through life are difficult, but they are making the journey and they deserve your love and respect for that; not your fear and disgust.
And yes, both the Democrats and Republicans have kept secrets. Big deal. I don't fall for the "Good Cop Bad Cop" game. It's for the birds.
-FL
Those who have the courage of a Lion will not have the fate of a mouse.
The cost will always go up and continue to rise for secerecy.And new technologies and information will continue to be suppressed in order to keep the Government one step ahead of its own society and the worlds as well. The Government will always need more money and will always find a new tax or up a current tax in order to pay for and to hide it's secerets.
Just because they didn't elaborate where each shelter or stockpile is doesn't mean it's classified. There's lots of information that's not supposed to be handed out to everyone, but isn't under the protection of required levels of security clearance.
Don't get me wrong, I do agree with you that they should disseminate this information ahead of time in the case of a disaster. On the other hand, I do understand, from the "everyone is out to get us" point of view that many in the government have, why they wouldn't want a web site where you could see the complete list of every emergency stockpile.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Supposedly, the greater danger is amalgating publically known information. If you read the public pages of various Air Force bases, you can infer a lot about what's going on and when. It's like the "pizza delivery" indication of national crisis. At one point, news outlets watched for pizza deliveries to the Pentagon because when there was something big going down, pizza delivery would spike as people stayed late to work on the problem. Supposedly the Pentagon now randomly orders out for large amounts of pizza just to throw off such news outlets.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Clinton wasn't actually impeached. Maybe you were thinking of Nixon.
And yes, the rest of the world shares your hope that somebody - anybody - in the US will wake up and get rid of your current administration.
you had me at #!