This is March 2, 2005
testimony by Thomas Blanton from the National Security Archive at George Washington University about secrecy and the out-of-control tendency of this administration to redact, over-classify and now, to pseudo-classify to keep information out of public view. (see graphic below)
This testimony includes a frame that links open government with more rather than less security. This seems like a frame it would do us good to adopt.
more below the fold
This is why Ms. Carol Haave, the deputy undersecretary of defense, framed the problem wrongly at your August 24 hearing. She testified, "In the end, this is a discussion about risk. How much risk is the nation willing to endure in the quest to balance protection against the public's desire to know? It's a complex question that requires thought and ultimately action."
She and the Pentagon have missed the point. We are not balancing protection against the public's desire to know. The tension is actually between bureaucratic imperatives of information control versus empowering the public and thus making us more safe. Yes, there are real secrets that must be protected, but the lesson of 9/11 is that we are losing protection by too much secrecy. The risk is that by keeping information secret, we make ourselves vulnerable. The risk is that when we keep our vulnerabilities secret, we avoid fixing them. In an open society, it is only by exposure that problems get fixed. In a distributed information networked world, secrecy creates risk - risk of inefficiency, ignorance, inaction, as in 9/11. As the saying goes in the computer security world, when the bug is secret, then only the vendor and the hacker know - and the larger community can neither protect itself nor offer fixes. Publicity is not a
SHARE network limited to relevant players. Publicity is TV, the newspapers, the Internet, and the highly efficient information distribution system that is our open society. That is our strength, not our weakness.
Exactly!
As a librarian (and a citizen for that matter), I really, really hate to see so much secrecy. How can you research any topic, find any fact, or make anyone accountable for their actions without accurate information about what has been done? And of course, that last is the point.
You'll also notice that the peaks of the chart are during the Reagan and GWB administrations. Naturally. The Clinton administration not only was moderate in its decisions to classify, but look at all the documents that were de-classified!
There are some humorous aspects to this. I understand from Henry Waxman's statement that the Department of Homeland Security used the "sensitive but unclassified" designation to withhold the name of the ombudsman that the public is supposed to call to report complaints about airline security.