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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.'"
It's kind of an odd figure to give. Bucks spent for keeping secrets relative per bucks spent declassifying them. A higher number, as has developed, could be caused by more secrets being kept, a higher cost associated with keeping them. (Both is probably happening.) Or it could be caused by fewer old secrets being declassified, or declassifying getting cheaper. Not sure if any of that is the case.
The figure also doesn't really give any indication if the total number of secrets is rising (ie more new secrets than declassifieds) because keeping a secret certainly is more expensive than declassifying one. But how much more expensive, I don't know.
Like I said, kind of an odd figure to give.
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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?"
No no, the people only elected Bush once. Katherine Harris elected him the first time.
... 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.
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
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
Of course the counterpoint to that is that by hiding the information, the government can get away with not replacing the faulty body armour on the basis that nobody's going to find out about the flaws.
"TO PROTECT NATIONAL INTERESTS"
That's what they are telling us, but they are lying. GW Bush is a liar. Let me say it so you can hear me, BUSH IS A LIAR.
The entire administration is based on lies. They stole two elections. They ignored intelligence which would/could/should have prevented 9/11. They started wars where there were none and where the US had no business starting them. They made rogues of us.
This is not about protecting national interests; it's about building power for a federal government controlled by a greedy, self-righteous, anti-American scumbag named GW Bush.
Do you thing it's just a coincidence that every catastrophe conveniently creates huge profit opportunities for Bush's and Cheney's corrupt business partners. The economy is in the toilet, yet Halliburton and the oil companies are making record profits. Are you so naive or so brainwashed that you can't see what's going on right under your nose?
Sure, it may be sensitive information to reveal the exact flaw in body armor, but don't you think the enemy already knows that the armor is fallible? Don't you know that the military is always lying about the bad stuff they expose GI's to? Do you remember Agent Orange? Why, for the first time in our history, have they censored pictures of GIs coming home in coffins?
If you want to talk about national interests, let's talk about thousands of dead people on the gulf coast who should have been protected by Bush's old roommate, incompetent equestrian judge, and even less capable FEMA director, Mike Brown. Bush said "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." Give me a break. Did he really say that? Yes, he did. They knew for sure that they would find WMD in Iraq, but they had no idea about the structural limits of a key naval port? I say he's an evil SOB, but even if I give him the benefit of the doubt, the only other conclusion I can reach is that he's as dumb as a bag of rocks.
Bush is destroying this country. The best way to protect national interests would be to remove him from office.
Someone flagged this as funny, but I agree with the notion, and question anyone who disagrees. Sure, that's how it used to work. We used to be able to mock them after the fact. No more. Government should function in the full light of day now. Watch them. Don't tell me it is like making sausage - that's an excuse. Hold people accountable, and manage your own government. Bite me, if you don't manage your executives, who will? Take some responsibility, for dog's sake.
I forget what 8 was for.
"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"
I don't think any leaked classified data made any contribution to Pearl Harbor or 9/11 though it is clever on your part to invoke those two traumas to win points for your argument.
In fact much of the "suprise" part of the "suprise attack" on Pearl Harbor was due to the high classification of Japanese communication intercepts which led to the many signals the Japanese were preparing an attack from being acted on.
There were certainly some strong indicators an attack at Pearl Harbor was imminent. It has created the long running conspiracy theory that FDR actually knew it was coming and wanted a devastating "sneak attack" so he could get a nation that was isolationist and pacifist mobilized for war. Weather it was FDR's intention or not it did work. Pearl Harbor propelled the U.S. into World War II with an enthusiasm that wouldn't have been there otherwise.
9/11 is not quite as clear cut, but it is clear a "classified" briefing in W.'s daily intelligence brief spelled out the danger of Al Qaeda launching an attack on the U.S. using airplanes while W. was on vacation in August and the attack came in September. All indications are the brief went unheeded and no action was taken. Little George apparently didn't for example tell the FBI to look in to this, because if they had they might have "connected the dots" that suspicious Arab men were training in the U.S. to fly airliners, a fact they knew but which had been sat on if not classified.
It is unavoidable that you do have to classify a lot of information in a world where you have enemies, especially ones intent on spying on you like the U.S.S.R, Russia, China and Israel.
But, a case can be made that classification causes as much harm as good since it destroys effective communication, WITHIN the government not just between the government and its people especially when it tilts of of control and delves in to excess.
Unfortunately classification is CONSTANTLY abused by people in government to conceal their failures and the failure of the government to do its job, and worse to hide some of its malevolent schemes. It's also integral in a government's creation of a false picture of the world in the minds of the population in order to manipulate them. Classification and propaganda go hand in hand.
A great example of out of control classification is the huge section of the congressional report on 9/11 in which the role of the Saudi people and government in 9/11 was spelled out in excruciating and embarrassing detail. Its hard to say why it was classified, most of the Congressman don't want it classifed. One guess is the Bush administration didn't want to embarrass their close personal friends in the House of Saud. The other is the Bush administration was engaged in weaving a propaganda web intent on connecting Iraq to 9/11 as an excuse for regime change and war, and 100 pages spelling out the Saudi's were in fact vastly more involved than Iraq would have been counterproductive to that propaganda effort.
A mostly forgotten case of classified data being released which exposed government malevolence and incompetence is the Pentagon Papers. Depending on your viewpoint this giant leak either exposed the bankruptcy of the American involvement in Vietnam and ended a misguidede war there, or their leak help collapse American resolve and contributed to its defeat there. Whichever it was, it was a high beam of truth about the reality of the situation there that classification would have suppressed were it not for Daniel Elsberg and his conscience.
@de_machina
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 think you are going a little bit far to claim that a point which is a matter of much dispute, with well-educated participants on both sides, is "basic economics". It's excessive to tell someone who does not support Bush's fiscal policies to "go back to school".
Certainly the government spent less under Clinton than under Bush. The fact that Bush prefers to finance the government via debt instead of taxes shouldn't fool anyone into thinking that his tax cuts represent fiscal restraint.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.