Please pause before using 'secret' stamp again

[AGENDA21]

It has been more than a year since Congress passed the Intelligence Reform Act, the largest restructuring of our national security agencies in half a century. As the law is implemented, we must overcome entrenched bureaucratic trends. Perhaps most entrenched is our tendency toward secrecy and over-classification.

Estimates of classified documents reach into the trillions, and the trends are toward more secrecy. In 1994, there were 4 million national security classification decisions made; in 2003, there were 15 million. The Information Security Oversight Office declassified 100 million pages of documents in 2001, but only 28 million in 2004. Requests filed by the media and the public under the Freedom of Information Act are routinely rejected or mysteriously delayed. Although the law calls for FOIA requests to receive a response within 20 days, the norm is significantly higher. Several senior officials have estimated that 50 percent of classified information does not need to remain secret.

Why is this the case? Our government has always adhered to a "need-to-know" principle when dealing with information, compartmenting who is permitted to see what, and what information will be made available to the public. Some of this is for good reason -- sources and methods of collection, for instance, must be protected. But all the incentives run toward secrecy: You can get in trouble for mistakenly disseminating information, but you cannot get in trouble for stamping something secret. You might say the motto is: When in doubt, classify.

Why is this a problem? To begin with, as we suggested on the 9/11 Commission, the "need-to- know'' principle must be balanced against a "need to share'' principle. A post-9/11 reality should not simply mean classifying more information; the lesson of 9/11 is that we must share more information, because the American people can be as hurt by the failure to share information as they can by the disclosure of secrets. That does not mean doing away with "need to know.'' It means recalibrating the balance between secrecy and sharing.

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060313/OPINION/603130301/1002

[pecwae]

1. "When in doubt, classify"

This was SOP when I was on Army AD in the early 80's. I recall seeing pages torn out of Time and Newsweek stamped SECRET (one had the word Spetnatz in the body of the story); how ridiculous is that? Trillions of classified documents is a number I can easily understand when even info the public is aware of is considered classified.

[Just Me]

2. An opaque rather than transparent government ALWAYS leads to,...

,...abuse of power. ALWAYS. I doubt the U.S. government has ever been as opaque and secretive as it is today and we are likely teetering in the territory of tyranny rather than democracy.