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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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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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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!
i am only supporting OpenSource/GPLed governments...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
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
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.
MIT Institute Professor Chomsky has spent countless months reading declassified material and observed that almost all of the material kept classified for 'security' reasons has no bearing on security. The main purpose appears to be to keep the general population out of the loop on what is happening and what decisions are being made.
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 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.
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.