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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.
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?"
Maybe because all the other information we can use to measure it is secret? ;)
No no, the people only elected Bush once. Katherine Harris elected him the first time.
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.
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!
Yes, he was impeached.
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.
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.
Bill Clinton was impeached as President of the United States on December 19, 1998 by the House of Representatives. The charges were perjury and obstruction of justice. The Senate acquitted Clinton on both counts in a trial concluding on February 12, 1999.
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.
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
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.
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 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.
Well, now that you just told the world it's collected by satellite, it serves no purpose to keep it secret. Also, you might want to adding some links: HUMINT
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.
"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
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
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.
Download the PDF from the article summary. Go to page 5. You should see a graph of the number of documents classified and declassified.
Notice how from 1994-2000 the number of declassified documents surges well above the number of classified documents, then drops back down again?
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
There's a bit more to those things as well. I've always been amazed at how much history is shaped by human beings buggering up, rather than plans going smoothly.
In the case of Pearl Harbour, it was never meant by the Japanese to be a surprise attack. It was supposed to begin half an hour after the declaration of war was delivered to the United States. Unfortunately, the actual declaration was classified to a point where only the highest level diplomats could be allowed to decode and translate it - and they couldn't type. So, by the time the declaration of war was actually ready to be delivered, the attack had been going on for half an hour.
Then there's 9/11 - imagine what would have happened if the CIA and the FBI hadn't been in the middle of a proverbial pissing match at the time, and the information about the upcoming attack had been passed on. Actually, it gets even worse - there is a bit of legislation that actually forbids the FBI and the CIA from working closely with one another, to prevent the two from launching a coup (I don't remember under which President that was - I think it might have been Ford).
Gotta love human error, eh?
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
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...
I would like to preface my response to your statement with the ascertion that I DID NOT ... TWICE! Nor, even, ONCE.
vote to elect Bush
The American people did not elect Bush twice, either. Due to voter disenfranchisement in a number of states (including Florida), a Florida law that prohibited a state-wide vote recount (which violated due process), and ineffective legal council on behalf of Bush's opponent, it was the US Supreme Court that voted George Walker Bush president, not the USA's citizens nor the Electoral College in 2000.
George Walker Bush has aptly demonstrated that (1) fetal alcohol syndrome IS REAL, (2) nepotism and monied interests trump "natural selection" in the vetting of qualified political candidates, (3) that the "Peter Principle" is also applies to political office, and (4) a lie repeated often enough really CAN be mistaken for the truth.
Bush's popularity as POTUS (President Of The United States) only increased AFTER the terrorist acts committed on 9/11/2001. GW Bush has been very busy since that time capitalizing on "wrapping himself in the flag" for a series of political agendas that are not only contrarian, but also antithetical to conservative values.
IMHO, history will eventually correct your (widely accepted) conclusion that the American people actually voted for Bush's "re-election" in 2004, once the breadth of voter disenfranchisement and vote fraud (electronic voting machines), and buying the silence of the major news organizations from a multi-billion dollar slush fund stolen from Iraqi war reconstruction funds are revealed.
Please do not blame me for the Bush presidency, which has been highlighted by one disaster after another.
"there is a bit of legislation that actually forbids the FBI and the CIA from working closely with one another, to prevent the two from launching a coup (I don't remember under which President that was - I think it might have been Ford)."
Its was mostly thanks to J. Edgar Hoover, LBJ, Richard Nixon and a series of CIA fuck ups in the 60's and 70's. The CIA was being used to spy on Americans, intervene in American domestic affairs, and play dirty tricks on political opponents of those in power, not to mention all the crackpot schemes they hatched in places like Cuba. Most of the abuses that were Watergate were perpetrated by people affiliated one way or another with the CIA. The Church Committee in particular resulted in a major reining in of the CIA and domestic spying. It was a Democrat led effort and the Republican's, especially the hard right, have been pissed about it ever since. Luckily for them all those restrictions are now gone thanks to the Patriot Act and the National Intelligence Reform Act which created a unified all seeing spy agency which is ripe for abuse by those in power.
All people hear about these days is about how those firewalls led to the failure to stop 9/11 well chances are it didn't. If you think removing them is a good idea you should read the Church reports and remember the massive abuse the CIA and FBI were engaging in before they were enacted. Those who fail to learn their history are doomed to repeat it. If you want to experience what life was like in the U.S.S.R with the KGB you really want a unified spying agency and domestic law enforcement agency with no restrictons on what they can do to American citizens in America.
"imagine what would have happened if the CIA and the FBI hadn't been in the middle of a proverbial pissing match at the time, and the information about the upcoming attack had been passed on"
Probably very little would have changed. The Republicans just wanted to con everyone in to thinking it would have made a difference because they wanted to get the Church restrictions removed, something they've wanted since they were passed in 1973. It worked. The information the FBI has on 9/11, mostly Arabs at flight schools, didn't even get through the channels in the FBI, it had no chance of going to the CIA. About the only thing that might have helped if the CIA had flagged a couple of the hijackers to the FBI when they entered the U.S. and if the FBI had followed up on it which is a big if.
@de_machina
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.
Actually, Bush was elected zero times. Katherine Harris elected him the first time, and Diebold elected him the second time.
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.
So if we don't protect the black-ops, we might find out exactly how and where they're screwing everybody and be able to do something stop it.
Gee. That'd be just horrible.
The stage-production of 'neighboring warring nations' which need to spy on one another is just that; a stage production created so that people can offer up over-simple rationalizations for continued secrecy and fear-based social controls.
-FL
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.
I'm not trying to "win points" for anything. I'm just trying to address a bureaucratic mindset. I never said the classification system had anything to do with either tragedy, and I didn't mean to imply it either. The point I was trying to make is while over-classifying data doesn't make sense from the country's perspective, from the low-level bureaucrat's perspective it's the easiest, safest thing to do.
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.
Oh, I agree completely. Based on what I've read in the paper over the years you can tell how well a weapon system works by looking at the classification. The more problems and cost overruns the system had the more secret it was. But having worked in that environment I can tell you the amount of stuff classified for political purposes is insignificant compared to the mountains of documents classified because nobody wants to be responsible for releasing it.
As to the 9/11 report, if you thought it was ever intended to contain anything embarrassing to anyone you didn't understand the purpose. The whole point of the 9/11 commission was to spread the blame around so thinly the public wouldn't blame either party for all the dropped balls. I would think this is obvious after all the Abel Danger stuff that's been coming out in the past couple of weeks.
"I didn't mean to imply it either"
May not have been your intention but it was the result, and you fell in to the same brand of rhetoric the Bush administration falls into when they want to win a point without risk of debate, just invoke 9/11 and Pearl Harbor and you can rationalize every government excess and accuse anyone who argues a counterpoint of being weak or unpatriotic.
"As to the 9/11 report..."
I wasn't referring to the 9/11 committee report. I was referring to the Congressional report which was harder hitting and laid some of the blame where it belonged on Saudi Arabia. The entire lengthy section on Saudi involvement with the plot was censored by the White House over the objections of Congressmen in both parties.
" I would think this is obvious after all the Abel Danger stuff that's been coming out in the past couple of weeks."
As nearly as I can tell Able Danger was a case of people with an agenda making something out of nothing. They are trying to con the nation in to legalizing and funding massive computerized spying on America by the Pentagon, and the easiest way to do it in the face of stiff opposition is to claim it would have prevented 9/11. I know Atta and a couple other hijackers were well known to the CIA as being potential Al Qaeda members. The fact a DOD mining project might have observed, quite vaguely, something that was already known is unexciting in the least. Its still open to debate if they made the whole thing up, or at least exaggerated it, because they have an agenda. Not hard to log all the Saudi nationals in the U.S. and assume some of them are Islamic extremists. Lot of 20/20 hindsight in Able Danger.
The more disturbing thing is the President had a briefing paper in August about Al Qaeda attacking the U.S. with airplanes and he didn't even bother to have the FBI follow up on it. If they had it might registered that field agents had red flagged Arabs in U.S. flight schools training to fly but not land airliners.
@de_machina
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?
I can attest to this, from personal experience. I tried to point out a security flaw in some code, but was told they'd already thought of it, tested it, and there was no such flaw. So I wrote a program to demonstrate the flaw. Was told it didn't demonstrate any flaw. I improved the program, and showed them again. They were finally convinced, and made "look what we discovered and how hard we've been working" brags to various interested parties, including the authors. The authors responded that they knew of it all along (they probably did, as its existence is a consequence of basic principles), but that the flaw was a secret. I was reprimanded for having "wasted" time (implicitly for not knowing the basics better-- never mind all the others who also did not know). So that's what making that info secret did: days to rediscover it and convince others who were also in the dark and in denial, instead of minutes to read and verify what was known. Of course part of the reason for this flaw being secret was that it was easier to hide than explain.
The system is seriously unbalanced. Anyone who has to decided whether some info should be secret is much safer deciding in favor of secret. There is no good way to identify all who really do "need to know", or, like a lot of negatives, measure of the cost of keeping info from them, so the system discounts those costs. The system lends itself to abuse, because of course outsiders can't judge whether a "secret" is an abuse if they can't learn what it is. Some have called the GPL viral. Classified info IS viral-- turns every paper or hard drive it touches into a classified object.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Uh, I was trying to provide information, not win a debate. As I said, that's the mindset among the people who classify information. Since you don't know me well enough to read my mind, please stick to commenting on what I'm writing without adding your own political baggage.
I wasn't referring to the 9/11 committee report. I was referring to the Congressional report which was harder hitting and laid some of the blame where it belonged on Saudi Arabia. The entire lengthy section on Saudi involvement with the plot was censored by the White House over the objections of Congressmen in both parties.
I'm so glad you have specific information about what was censored in that report. Perhaps you can share?
As nearly as I can tell Able Danger was a case of people with an agenda making something out of nothing. They are trying to con the nation in to legalizing and funding massive computerized spying on America by the Pentagon, and the easiest way to do it in the face of stiff opposition is to claim it would have prevented 9/11.
No, what they're trying to do is figure out how it is the military could have figured out Atta was a terrorist but didn't think it was important enough to pass on to the FBI. The idea the 9/11 commission could ommit any mention of Abel Danger from the report and maintain a shred of dignity or credibility is patently ridiculous. That's the point I was trying to make.
I know Atta and a couple other hijackers were well known to the CIA as being potential Al Qaeda members.
You know that? How? I've never seen anything along those lines except for pure speculation. I doubt they knew, since the CIA doesn't seem to actually do anything these days beyond selectively releasing classified data in an effort to affect domestic politics. In any event it's irrelevent - they don't have the authority to do anything on US soil, so if they don't pass this kind of information on to the FBI they may as well not exist at all.
The more disturbing thing is the President had a briefing paper in August about Al Qaeda attacking the U.S. with airplanes and he didn't even bother to have the FBI follow up on it. If they had it might registered that field agents had red flagged Arabs in U.S. flight schools training to fly but not land airliners.
First of all, the president gets briefed on thousands of those kinds of possibilities - plots to poison reservoirs, blow up oil refineries, ram oil tankers into bridges - you name it. If there's no specific information it doesn't rise above the noise floor. It doesn't bother me that he didn't take action to address any one specifically - it's not his job to micro-manage the FBI, and if he tries he'll just make things worse.
Secondly, the FBI doesn't need direct presidential authority to put potential terrorists under surveilance, and they don't wait for it in other cases. They may need a warrant, but that's not the President's office.
You'd rather be in favor of no secrets in our government, which would let other countries walk all over our national concerns, as well completely negate any insight that we may have into things that other countries aren't forthcoming about?
That question is based on a high degree of dogma. You presuppose that governments have our best interests at heart. Just look at Katrina for the latest example of how false that idea is!
And putting all current events aside?
Seeing as we don't live under a theoretical governmental system, what value is there in not looking at objective reality when posing questions about whether government secrets are good or bad? Anybody who does the slightest bit of real digging quickly learns that we are being *shafted* by the current leaders, as well as the ones before them, and the ones before those. The 'informed' decisions made by those policy makers were and are designed to cause chaos and fear, to control us and set us in a reality where we are afraid of "being walked all over by other countries". This is a lie. An enforced stage production perpetrated by the secret keepers. People simply dance (go to war) over the lies sold to them by their social and religious leaders. That's how it works.
The CIA has destroyed the social structures of many countries which were threatening to rise in world power through the development of healthy and democratically elected governments which 'threaten' to offer good social services and fairly traded goods. The CIA does this precisely to keep the US on top of the heavily slanted power and money game. Look at what is happening in Venezuela right now. This is what secrecy leads to.
Once secrets are gone, once people have full knowledge and the willingness to look at and act on that knowledge, corruption will have a much harder time existing.
The only place I see for secrecy is when speaking a truth will endanger or hurt a person or people who are not emotionally or physically ready for such knowledge and who choose to stay ignorant and deal with their issues at their own speed. For instance, you don't share deep government secrets when you know the receiver would be harrassed or murdered for receiving that data.
-FL
" Since you don't know me well enough to read my mind"
Don't need to read your mind, just pointing out you are using the same rhetoric the Bush administration uses, dropping 9/11 at every turn to avoid having to making a coherent argument. I'll take you at your word that is was harmless but I like a lot of people am sick of hearing people drop 9/11 everytime they want to use a sledge hammer to make a point.
"I'm so glad you have specific information about what was censored in that report. Perhaps you can share?"
Obviously not it was CENSORED and to my knowledge it hasn't leaked which is miraculous as leak prone as Washington is. They only thing we know is the Bush administration censored everything in the report relating to Saudi Arabia, some 90-100 pages. The congressmen who wrote the report said that much.
"You know that? How? I've never seen anything along those lines except for pure speculation."
We know with as much certainty as anyone can know about anything the CIA does, that the CIA starting tailing Atta in Germany as far back as 2000, the trusty Wikipedia article. Its well known the CIA tracked him until he entered the U.S. and then dropped surveillance of him because they are precluded from operations in the U.S. Either they didn't flag him to the FBI when he entered or the FBI didn't follow up, I don't remember which.
There is a distinct chance Able Danger learned Atta was an Al Qaeda suspect from someone in the CIA and claimed their data mining project discovered this fact independently to make themselves look good.
Bottomline is you really can't believe anything Able Danger people say, waiting until 4 years later to claim they could have foiled 9/11.
"First of all, the president gets briefed on thousands of those kinds of possibilities"
So what is the point of spending billions on intelligence and intelligence briefings if you don't follow up on any of it unless its a "slam dunk".
"Secondly, the FBI doesn't need direct presidential authority to put potential terrorists under surveillance, and they don't wait for it in other cases."
Well obviously they did need it because they in fact failed to track the known Al Qaeda members when they entered the country, didn't track 9/11 hijackers training in U.S. flight schools to fly but not land airliners, even after one of their agents in Phoenix red flagged them, didn't follow up on Moussaui. My only point is that had the President had directed them to look at the threat that might have set off some light bulb in someones head about the hijackers training in U.S. flight schools they might have foiled the plot.
Though at this point I really can't stand playing the 9/11 blame game anymore. There is a lot more current stuff to blame the Bush administration for which are "slam dunks" in particular the disaster that is Iraq. I quit on the 9/11 blame game, its not even interesting any more.
@de_machina
Greatly angering Hoover's FBI who considered those to be their duties exclusively.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
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.
the problem is the man at the top of the system, who then creates the levels immediately below him.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
I think my argument is logical and coherent. You seem to have some fixation with the Bush administration - maybe you should see someone about that. The point was every low-level military guy and civil servant classifies as much as possible as a career preservation tactic. They really are afraid of getting blamed for some major catastrophe on the order of the 9/11 attack even if it doesn't make objective sense.
Obviously not it was CENSORED and to my knowledge it hasn't leaked which is miraculous as leak prone as Washington is. They only thing we know is the Bush administration censored everything in the report relating to Saudi Arabia, some 90-100 pages. The congressmen who wrote the report said that much.
Right, my point exactly. Hard to use a report you don't have access to to support an argument. For all we know it included information on Saudi government corruption or some prince's embarrassing relations with a goat. We can speculate, but that's all it is - speculation.
We know with as much certainty as anyone can know about anything the CIA does, that the CIA starting tailing Atta in Germany as far back as 2000, the trusty Wikipedia article. Its well known the CIA tracked him until he entered the U.S. and then dropped surveillance of him because they are precluded from operations in the U.S. Either they didn't flag him to the FBI when he entered or the FBI didn't follow up, I don't remember which.
I refuse to accept Wikipedia as a source, and the references are either subscription only or don't support that assertion. Do you have another source for the part about the CIA, preferably something official? I can't find any reasonable source on Google to back it up.
There is a distinct chance Able Danger learned Atta was an Al Qaeda suspect from someone in the CIA and claimed their data mining project discovered this fact independently to make themselves look good.
Do you have a reason to think this beyond idle speculation? I see no reason they couldn't have done what they claim to have done.
Bottomline is you really can't believe anything Able Danger people say, waiting until 4 years later to claim they could have foiled 9/11.
That's not really true. The information was given to the 9/11 commission years ago, they just chose not to reference or investigate it, since it either a) didn't fit with their notion that Atta never travelled under false passport (which isn't true, but that's what they were told by the CIA) or b) their (unofficial) charter was spread out the blame, which couldn't be done if this information came to light. The reason we're hearing about it four years later is the official report came out with no mention Abel Danger and the people involved have (illegally) gone public out of frustration.
So what is the point of spending billions on intelligence and intelligence briefings if you don't follow up on any of it unless its a "slam dunk".
Now you're being deliberately obtuse. You must realize I meant the president can't address all those leads personally. The fact it was in a breifing given to him is meaningless without knowing exactly what was said and the surrounding context. If it was just a long laundry list of possibilities there would have been no reason for him to address it specifically. Consider the fact the 9/11 attack is pretty minor-league compared to the things the president actually is addressing personally, like fusion bombs simultaneously detonated in multiple large US cities.
My only point is that had the President had directed them to look at the threat that might have set off some light bulb in someones head about the hijackers training in U.S. flight schools they might have foiled the plot.
And my point was you can't exp
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 #!
praise allah
crap post
many praises to allah
amen
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