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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.'"
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.
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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.
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.
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.
If you ever work with classified data you'll realize it's almost impossible to get something declassified, 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. When you're a civil servant, the key to advancing is to not do anything that hurts your career, as opposed to businessmen (and to some extent, military) who advance their careers by doing something.
Also, not classifying sensitive data is a career-ending mistake, while over-classifying unimportant data is, well, nothing that will ever get you into trouble. Who's gonna know? So when in doubt you always err on the side of extra security.
Sometime in the '80s they made a change to the rules where if you classified something you had to put a date upon which the item becomes declassified automatically. Unfortunately, there's warehouses full of classified data dating back to the second world war (think Raiders of the Lost Ark here) that nobody has the time to look at, so it will never be declassified.
I suspect most of the old stuff will eventually be destroyed for lack of money, which is a shame from the historical perspective.