Secret Gov't Documents Will be Declassified 12/31

mozzwald writes "This New Year's Eve, at midnight on the dot, hundreds of millions of pages of U.S. government secrets will be revealed. Or at least they'll no longer be official secrets — it may actually take months or more for the National Archives and Records Administration to make those pages available for public consumption."

Comments

It's nice to see they've solved the problem

[MarkusQ]

I was recently pleased to discover that our leaders have hit upon an ideal solution for the perennial problem of that pesky public eventually getting their hands on documents like this. It's so simple, I don't know why they didn't think of it sooner.

Don't produce the information that will make you look bad in the first place.

For instance:

• After a government report showed an increase in terrorism around the world, the administration announced it would stop publishing its annual report on international terrorism.
• A rule change at the U.S. Geological Survey restricts agency scientists from publishing or discussing research without that information first being screened by higher-ups at the agency. Special screening will be given to "findings or data that may be especially newsworthy, have an impact on government policy, or contradict previous public understanding to ensure that proper officials are notified and that communication strategies are developed.
• The Treasury Department stopped producing reports showing how the benefits of tax cuts were distributed by income class.
• After the Bureau of Labor Statistics uncovered discouraging data about factory closings in the U.S., the administration announced it would stop publishing information about factory closings.

Of course, the old trick of covering up / reclassifying things is still in use as well:

• The FBI attempted to retroactively classify public information regarding the case of bureau whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, including a series of letters between the Justice Department and several senators.
• President Bush issued an executive order limiting the public's access to presidential records. The order undermined the 1978 Presidential Records Act, which required the release of those records after 12 years. Bush's order prevented the release of "68,000 pages of confidential communications between President Ronald Reagan and his advisers," some of whom had positions in the Bush Administration.
• The Federal Communications Commission blocked access to a once-public database of network outages affecting telecommunications service providers. The FCC removed public copies and exempted the information from Freedom of Information Act requests, saying it would "jeopardize national security efforts."
• The Federal Communications Commission ordered destroyed all copies of an unreleased 2004 draft report concluding that media consolidation hurt local TV news coverage, which runs counter to the administration's pro-consolidation stance.
• ...and so on.

Still, I think the new approach is much more elegant and will probably save the taxpayers a lot in the long run.

--MarkusQ P.S. Sources and many more examples here.