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Secrecy News - July 16, 2007 |
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Monday, 16 July 2007 |
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Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists. Excerpts and links on ShadowMonkey.net are re-published with permission.
FEWER NEW SECRETS, BUT MORE CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS IN 2006
For the second year in a row, the number of new national security
secrets created by government officials declined, according to a new
report to the President from the Information Security Oversight Office
(ISOO).
At the same time, however, the number of new classified records
incorporating previously classified information increased sharply, ISOO
found.
While "original classifications" declined by 10%, "derivative
classifications" increased by 45%. As a result, total classification
activity grew from 14.2 million classification actions in 2005 to 20.5
million classification actions in 2006.
Meanwhile, the financial costs of protecting classified information in
government and industry grew to a new record high of $9.5 billion in
2006.
Significantly, ISOO reviewers reported a "high error rate" in the
documents that they examined for compliance with classification
procedures.
Once again, the Office of the Vice President declined to cooperate with
ISOO last year and to provide data on its classification and
declassification activity. It last reported to ISOO in 2002.
Read the full post...
VARIOUS RESOURCES
An exceptionally interesting July 12 House Intelligence Subcommittee
hearing on national security classification policy, featuring William
Leonard of the Information Security Oversight Office, Meredith Fuchs of
the National Security Archive, and myself, was recorded by C-SPAN and
may be viewed online, at least temporarily, here:
http://www.c-span.org/rss/video.asp?MediaID=31644
In accordance with new legislative transparency provisions, the Senate
Intelligence Committee identified three funding "earmarks" in the
pending intelligence authorization bill for FY 2008. See these July 9
remarks of Committee Chairman Sen. Jay Rockefeller:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_cr/sen-earmark.html
The record of a January 2007 hearing on presidential signing statements
that was held by the House Judiciary Committee has now been published:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_hr/signing.html
A 1942 U.S. military intelligence document describes "German tactical
doctrine," based on the accounts of four American officers who were
allowed to study at the German General Staff School from 1935-1939.
"From their illuminating reports it is possible to learn the trend of
German methods and teachings up to Hitler's attack on Poland,"
according to the 1942 Foreword. Originally published in 1989, the
document was recently made available online.
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/navy/german.pdf
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