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Government Secrecy Grows out of Control |
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by Nick Schwellenbach
(No verified email address) |
24 Sep 2004
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To ensure the government is defending America from within and without the public needs information to decide. Poor decisions, as well as the good, by the government need to be known, so that the essential democratic operation of informed voting can work to keep government accountable. What's really needed is an information sharing plan that includes the public. |
There is too much secrecy. That's what a new report by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., takes the Bush administration to task on. Yet this report should not be construed as a narrow partisan attack but rather as the latest salvo in a debate where advocates of open government span the ideological spectrum. And there's a good reason. Inordinate secrecy hampers the nonpartisan values of both national security and democracy.
Critics left, right and non-aligned have all argued that government secrecy is escalating at a fever pitch. OpentheGovernment.org's "Secrecy Report Card'' notes that 14 million new classification decisions were made in 2003, up 60 percent from 2001.
Secrecy is expensive, too. Over the same period the amount of taxpayer dollars spent on classification increased nearly $2 billion, to $6.5 billion annually.
And after being questioned by Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., on the percentages of classified information that are and are not correctly classified, Carol Haave, deputy undersecretary of defense for counterintelligence and security, answered, "50-50.'' This echoes comments made by Secretary of State Colin Powell when he said that because of over-classification "access (is) more difficult than was the case even at the height of the Cold War.''
Moreover, a veritable alphabet soup of non-classification information controls, such as Critical Infrastructure Information (CII), Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU), and Sensitive Security Information (SSI) are proliferating without the oversight that classification has. Steven Aftergood, a secrecy expert at the Federation of American Scientists, says that without oversight these new controls present "a recipe for chaos.''
There are serious consequences from these restrictions to government data. According to the 9-11 Commission Report, "the biggest impediment'' to getting the analysis needed to combat terrorism "is the human or system resistance to sharing information.'' Because information is unduly kept under wraps by institutional cultures of secrecy, it gets stuck. And this is exactly the problem. Information needs to be shared between government agencies so it gets in the right hands.
Furthermore, this government intelligence network needs to be largely open. The need-to-know culture assumes that it can be known in advance who "needs to know.'' In response, the 9-11 Commission bluntly states, "Those Cold War assumptions are no longer appropriate.'' Need-to-know needs to be replaced with "need to share.''
However, there may be a serious problem with so-called trusted information networks. There are concerns that, ironically, as the walls of secrecy within the government are broken down, unnecessary walls between the government and the public are going up.
This may already be happening with the landmark federal Freedom of Information Act. The massive Homeland Security Act of 2002 created the Critical Infrastructure Information exemption to FOIA. CII was created with the dual functions of keeping sensitive information protected from public access and to facilitate the sharing of it between the government and industry for security reasons.
Underscoring the lack of oversight, no one knows quite how CII is being used. CII may be protecting only unique information that would likely help terrorists. Or it could be smothering environmental and safety information crucial to the public interest in order to spare corporations and the government embarrassment and money.
Indeed, this is but one example among many. With the rise of Homeland Security and the War on Terrorism, the old distinctions between national security and domestic information concerns of safety, the environment and government accountability have been blurred. Unfortunately, this is leading many policy-makers to seek "security through obscurity'' in regards to public access to government information.
Yet this should not be the time to write open government's obituary — to the contrary. To ensure the government is defending America from within and without the public needs information to decide. Poor decisions, as well as the good, by the government need to be known, so that the essential democratic operation of informed voting can work to keep government accountable. What's really needed is an information sharing plan that includes the public.
In sum, excessive secrecy cripples everyone's ability to act by hiding government mistakes and corruption. Hence public knowledge is not inimical to national security, but integral to it.
Nick Schwellenbach is a fellow at the Project On Government Oversight, a watchdog group that promotes open and accountable government.
Copyright © 2004 • Lee Enterprises
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