The Government Has Been Binging On Classification. Senators Say It's Time To Start Purging.

from the affected-agencies:-hey-if-it's-not-working-don't-fix-it dept

Senators Ron Wyden and Jerry Moran have published an op-ed at Just Security detailing the government's overuse of classification (and distaste for declassification) -- a practice that uses our tax dollars to keep secrets from us. Overclassification is a problem. It has been a problem for decades, but it keeps getting worse. Multiple government agencies spend billions every year marking things "classified" and then forgetting the documents they've classified still exist.

Under the current system, costly resources are used to hold on to records that no longer require classification resulting in an unnecessary waste of taxpayer dollars. The cost of the government’s classification system now exceeds $18 billion annually. Additionally, when records are kept classified for reasons that have nothing to do with national security, historians, journalists, public watchdogs and all Americans are denied their right to research historical events or examine the actions of their government to hold it accountable. As the line between classification for national security and pointless secrecy is blurred, public trust in government erodes.

What should be classified? That's anyone's guess. Most federal agencies err on the side of caution/obfuscation. Back when he was still president, Barack Obama tried to explain this in layman's terms. Unfortunately, his explanation -- handed out after some selective prosecution by the DOJ -- was not the paragon of clarity... although it did inform taxpaying laymen the government alone would decide what the public gets to see.

“There’s classified, and then there’s classified,” the president said.

Both are still classified. In some cases, the sharing of classified information is forgiven. In other cases, it's a prosecution. But the underlying fact remains: the government classifies too much stuff too often. The op-ed notes the Information Security Oversight Office has warned of a "deluge" of classified info in the federal document pipeline. What's already a catastrophe will become cataclysmic as more documents are created more often and classified more frequently.

If it costs us $18 billion a year just to classify documents, imagine the cost of declassifying info once it reaches its expiration date. At this point, the federal government is still saving us a few bucks by ignoring the stockpile of documents slated for declassification. This isn't making the public any more knowledgeable, but it is, in its own way, somewhat efficient.

The Senators say it's time for the declassification system to be overhauled and modernized. Sooner would be better, considering the "deluge" that's worrying the ISOO. They aren't just complaining about an ongoing -- and growing -- problem. The two Senators actually want to do something about it.

Records can be “tagged” so that when information is no longer suitable for classification, the records which include that information are easily identified for release. AI and machine learning can be used to find buried records appropriate for declassification. And when it is time to declassify records that include information from multiple government agencies, those agencies can be connected electronically rather than having to rely on couriers physically walking paper copies around Washington.

But will Congress or whatever president is in office like this solution? The government likes its secrets. So do its many employees, especially the powerful ones who don't like embarrassing or horrifying information coming to light, even if it's years after the fact. But they have an obligation to the public to be more open about the things they're doing -- and have done -- with the implicit blessing of taxpayers via their tax dollars.

Thanks to op-eds like these, we're aware we're paying $18 billion a year to have information hidden from us, sometimes for decades. And we know the government's obligations to the public are being ignored by government agencies more willing to throw money at classifying documents than digging through their archives for stuff that can be released. This needs to change. The fix might not be easy or cheap, but ignoring the problem isn't going to make it go away.

Filed Under: classification, declassification, government, jerry moran, overclassification, ron wyden, secrecy, secrets, transparency

Government Agencies Apparently Not Interested In Following Congressional Directives On Overclassification

from the you-literally-couldn't-pay-us-enough-to-do-our-jobs dept

I'm not sure what this says about government transparency. Maybe it doesn't say anything useful. Maybe it's just the mixed signals we can expect from agencies only willing to make the most minimal transparency efforts. Or maybe it says something about the momentum of even slowly-moving large objects. A bureaucracy has a large turning radius and asking it to suddenly change its ways means you have to lower your expectations as to how "suddenly" should be defined. Whatever it says, it's nothing good.

Overclassification is a government-wide problem. Legislation has been passed to fix it. While the government expects the private sector to get right on it when laws are passed, it obviously cuts itself a lot more slack when faced with internal legislative redirection.

Recognizing the threat posed by over-classification, Congress passed legislation in 2010 to counter the pervasive problem of bureaucrats making benign government records secret. One of the most highlighted provisions of the Reducing Over-Classification Act (ROCA) was a new tool for agencies: cash incentives for employees who accurately classify (and declassify) documents.

Congress hoped that by offering a proverbial carrot to the line-level employees making initial classification decisions within federal agencies, it could increase transparency and allow greater information sharing between federal agencies and local law enforcement.

Not even the dangling of cash money can push agencies towards more transparency, as the EFF's Dave Maass and Aaron Mackey report.

Based on the FOIA responses EFF has received, it does not appear that a single federal agency with the power to classify documents has ever taken advantage of ROCA’s cash incentives program. EFF’s FOIA request sought a variety of records related to the ROCA incentive program, including guidelines for issuing bonuses and the amount of bonuses given out.

Of the agencies we queried, 16 agencies responded that they either had no responsive records or that they do not operate a ROCA incentive program. Three other agencies denied our request, while the remaining eight have yet to provide a determination.

Congress has declared overclassification should be corrected by government agencies. The agencies have shrugged... for a half-decade straight. But hey, transparency! More than half the agencies responded and only three outright denied the EFF's request. That's… something.

Tellingly, two agencies that oversee a ton of classified info responded negatively. James Clapper's office (ODNI) couldn't find anything that suggested it had scaled back its black marker use, and the National Archives and Records Administration first said the law didn't apply to it, before changing its mind and stating it had never implemented the program.

Other agencies that cherish their secrecy and fully-redacted FOIA responses also had made no moves towards scaling back overclassification. The FBI, DEA, and ATF all responded that no one in their agencies had ever claimed ROCA's cash prizes. The same thing goes for the DHS, Defense Department, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The State Department offered two "no files found" responses, with the first implying it had trouble understanding the question.

"You have not reasonably described the records you seek in a way that someone familiar with Department records and programs could locate them."

and

"Some or all of the records you have requested do not appear to be State Department records.

The good news is the FOIA process works, at least in this small sampling. The bad news is there's apparently no effort being made to live up to the demands of ROCA, six years after its passage into law. The end result may look more promising, what with agencies (for the most part) amping up their FOIA response capabilities. But if they're not handing over documents because they've gone wild with the "CLASSIFIED" stamp, then they may as well just go back to ignoring FOIA requests.

The worst news, though, is that government agencies feel directives issued via legislation are entirely optional. Their employers, however, are not given the luxury of ignoring laws they don't like. Taxpayers are expected to follow every stupid law forced on them by their representatives while subsidizing entire agencies that shrug off their responsibilities to the public.

Filed Under: bonuses, classification, government, overclassification

CIA Inspector General Can't Find A Single Example Of CIA Overclassification

from the oh-really? dept

A few days ago, we wrote about the CIA redacting information regarding the price it paid for a single Amiga computer back in 1987. After such news reports came out, the CIA admitted that this was an error and shouldn't have been redacted. Of course, the only reason the documents with that information came out in the first place was because of the efforts of former CIA agent Jeffrey Scudder, who had come across a bunch of classified documents internally that he realized should no longer be classified. Based on that, he filed a FOIA request for those documents -- leading the FBI to come after him and end his CIA career (despite his actions being entirely legal).

It's hard not to see all of that as evidence that the CIA has a pretty serious overclassification problem. But don't tell that to the CIA. A newly (yes) declassified report from the CIA's Inspector General reveals that they could not find a single example of overclassification by the CIA. None. Nada. The CIA has a perfect score, apparently. They do admit to finding errors in how some information was recorded, but not a single case of overclassification: If you can't see the image, the key part is:

We found no instance of over-classification in the sample of [REDACTED] finished intelligence reports that we reviewed

Admittedly, the number of reports reviewed is classified here, so perhaps the Inspector General just reviewed one. Or zero. But, uh, wait a second... why is the number of reports reviewed classified in the first place? The number is listed as (b)(3) exemption, which tells you basically nothing. It just incorporates things exempted by other statutes. Basically, it's saying there's some law out there that forbids us from revealing this. Of course, one could argue that this seems like a case of overclassification... in the report that insists that the Inspector General couldn't find any examples of overclassification.

Still, it seems like it should raise some alarm bells when they can't find a single example. It's like cheating students, with poor test-taking history, who suddenly get all the answers correct. It should make the teacher more skeptical. Cheating students often know to at least get one or two answers wrong on purpose, and it's fairly amazing that the CIA couldn't find any examples of overclassification just to keep the red flags from being raised. But, then again, who are we kidding? This is the CIA and it's never been concerned with red flags. It throws them up left and right and no one seems to care.

Filed Under: cia, overclassification

If The Justice Department Has A Plan To Fix Its Overclassification Problem, It's Probably Classified

from the moving-at-the-speed-of-treading-water dept

The problem of over-classification continues, not that it ever wasn't a problem. An Office of Inspector General (OIG) report on the DOJ's classification policies and procedures notes that the 9/11 Commission, which was formed in 2002, reached the same conclusion almost a decade ago. In the wake of the largest terrorist attack on the US, the Commission pointed out that over-classification "interferes with accurate and actionable information sharing, increases the cost of information security, and needlessly limits stakeholder and public access to information." Basically stated, over-classification has the ability to kill.

Despite that warning, it continues, not only unimpeded but in new and spectacular ways. As Ryan Gallagher at Slate points out, the problem is widespread, systemic and the direct result of bureaucratic expansion.

According to the Information Security Oversight Office, in 2012 alone, executive branch agencies issued more than 95 million “classification decisions.” That’s a 3 percent increase on the figure for 2011 (92 million), and a 25 percent rise on the figure for 2010 (77 million).

The IG report says that while misclassification at the DOJ is not “widespread,” redactions done by the department are sometimes wrong and unnecessary, and that officials appear to have a blasé approach to classification. The IG reviewed a sample of 141 documents in total—from the FBI, the DEA, the National Security Division, and the Criminal Division—and found a total of 357 “classified document marking errors,” meaning that they either did not contain required classification markings or contained incorrect classification markings.

The report breaks it down a bit more dryly, but without blunting the impact.

[W]e found several documents in which unclassified information was inappropriately identified as being classified. We also identified many documents that either did not contain required classification markings or contained incorrect classification markings. Some of these marking errors included missing, incomplete, or incorrect classification blocks, source references, portion markings, dissemination markings, and declassification instructions.

The lack of clear direction and best practices has led directly to this bizarre classification "system," in which each person makes their own rules and builds upon the similarly made-up "rules" of their peers.

In addition, we found that the National Security Division, Criminal Division, and the DEA incorrectly categorized many decisions to classify information as “original” classification decisions when these decisions actually were derivative classification decisions, as the classified information in the documents had been classified previously. The risk inherent in this practice is that individuals who inappropriately apply original decisions could apply these decisions inconsistently for the same types of information and information that should be treated similarly will be classified differently across programs. Also, this practice could result in classifiers believing that they could establish the classification levels, dissemination controls, or declassification dates of their choosing rather than the ones previously established by the actual original classification decision.

That's the sort of sloppiness that leads to 95 million "classification decisions" in a single year. The promised transparency of the current administration doesn't stand a chance when thousands of DOJ employees are making millions of these "decisions" every year. This widespread and chaotic "system" also defangs FOIA laws, as anything deemed classified can reasonably be withheld from requesters.

But what's more disturbing than the secrecy-driven bureaucracy is the fact that it's gone on for so long with almost no perceptible improvement. Every OIG report over the past several years has detailed problems and made specific recommendations for improvement, but these seem to be routinely ignored or, at best, briefly entertained before the various entities return to business as usual.

In 2006, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) also reviewed DOJ’s management of classified information. This review included an assessment of DOJ’s implementation of NARA’s Information Security Oversight Office on-site inspection recommendations. GAO reported that DOJ did not know the optimum number of staff it needed for its classification program because it had not assessed its needs and did not have a strategy to identify how it would use additional resources to address classification program deficiencies. GAO found that, as a result of these resource issues, DOJ had not fully implemented various recommendations from NARA’s Information Security Oversight Office and DOJ’s ability to oversee classification practices across components was insufficient.

Seven years have passed and the DOJ still hasn't fully implemented the recommendations and its oversight it still "insufficient." Not only is the DOJ uninterested in improving, it's also taken a hands-off approach to ensuring its own security, making the over-classification of documents even more useless, considering many of these could be viewed by people without proper clearance or just walk right out the door.

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) reviewed personnel security processes throughout DOJ and issued reports in September 2012 and March 2013 that included recommendations to increase resources devoted to certain security program issues. These reports found that SEPS [Security and Emergency Planning Staff] did not implement adequate personnel security processes to identify security violations and enforce security policies. Moreover, SEPS issued minimal guidance for components to follow in managing their contractor security programs and the guidance does not provide standards for maintaining accurate rosters on contract employees or periodic reinvestigations.

The report also details ongoing issues. Money spent on automated tools meant to prevent "original" classification decisions is wasted as the tools are rolled out unevenly and without adequate training. The DOJ's internal inspection reports are loaded with "methodological errors" and, in some cases, mandatory annual inspections were only being performed every third year. In other cases, information pertaining to classification violations was withheld from SEPS oversight (and consequently, the OIG).

According to FBI officials, in 2010 the FBI incorrectly entered Top Secret information from an Intelligence Community agency into a Secret-level FBI database used to track terrorist threats. The incident was identified when an FBI employee was informed by the Intelligence Community agency that certain information, when combined, was classified at the Top Secret level. As part of this review, in March 2013 the OIG learned of the incident followed up with the FBI to determine whether the classified information had been removed from the Secret database and whether the classified information might also have been inappropriately included in other FBI systems. FBI officials told us that they were not certain whether the information was included in other FBI systems. Ultimately, it was not until July 2013, approximately 3 years after the incident and after multiple inquiries by the OIG, that the FBI completed the removal of the information from other FBI systems.

Notably, we found that the FBI did not inform SEPS of the compromise. In August 2013, after the OIG inquired about why the FBI had not met its responsibility to notify SEPS of the incident, the FBI officials informed us that they would notify SEPS that month.

Like many other OIG reports, the overall picture painted is depressing. The bloat associated with a large-scale bureaucracy (over 115,000 employees in the DOJ alone -- and many other agencies under its purview) makes any change in course abysmally slow, almost to the point of being imperceptible. This problem is made worse by the DOJ's preference towards erring on the side of secrecy.

Eleven years since the 9/11 Commission's report and nothing has changed. But this should come as no surprise, considering there's very little being deployed in the way of incentives or deterrents that might effect a change. If there's no impetus, there's no forward motion.

The DOJ will continue to veer towards secrecy because that is the standard MO of nearly any government agency -- especially those involved in our two greatest "battles," terrorism and drugs. "Original" classification decisions will continue to be a problem simply because the government has drilled low-level, terrorism-related panic into everyone's brains. No one wants to be the person whose unclassified document is waved around as the reason the terrorists are winning. Better safe than sorry.

Two consecutive administrations have leveraged these two wars to create a rift between the "combatants" and the public, further encouraging greater secrecy -- the same secrecy that threatens the success of the "combatants" by compartmentalizing intelligence and data into bureaucratic fiefdoms patrolled by men and women with itchy "CLASSIFIED" trigger fingers.

The upsides to a cohesive and restrained classification system belong almost solely to the public -- greater transparency and information dissemination. Our public servants, when faced with national security and other existential threats, will almost always find the public good being pushed to the bottom of the priority list. Annual reports come and go, but a classified document stays locked up for dozens of years.

The OIG has no carrot and no stick. The improvements needed have to come from above and within, but neither show much willingness to change.

Filed Under: doj, overclassification

Congress Abuses 'It's Classified' To Hide Stuff They Don't Want To Talk About

from the of-course-they-do dept

Reporters at McClatchy have been doing a bang up job covering government abuses lately, and their latest is a report talking about how frequently Congress abuses the ability to classify documents to hide from any sort of accountability or transparency. As the article says: "for Congress, 'it's classified' is new equivalent of 'none of your business.'" The article highlights just how frequently elected officials in Congress have been hiding behind "it's classified" lately. The article focuses on a recent effort to provide weapons to rebels in Syria. Apparently, Congress signed off on it, but it won't tell anyone the details even of who approved it, because, well, you guessed it: "it's classified."

Those were, in fact, the words Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chair of the committee, used when asked a few days before the approval was granted to clarify her position for her constituents. She declined. It’s a difficult situation, she said. And, “It’s classified.”

She was not alone. In a string of interviews over days, members of both the Senate intelligence committee or its equivalent in the House were difficult to pin down on their view of providing arms to the rebels. The senators and representatives said they couldn’t give an opinion, or at least a detailed one, because the matter was classified.

It’s an increasingly common stance that advocates of open government say undermines the very principle of a representative democracy.

The article highlights how Congress has realized that it can avoid having to answer difficult questions by slapping the "it's classified" claim on just about anything. But it's the difficult questions that they should have to answer, and by avoiding them, they're fundamentally avoiding their jobs. They're clearly not representing the American people, because they refuse to answer to them.

Filed Under: classified, congress, difficult questions, overclassification

NSA Now Revealing A Lot More About What It Does Than Snowden Leaks Did; So Is That Harming America?

from the just-wondering dept

One of the key refrains that has come out from those who are unhappy about the revelation of details around the NSA's surveillance efforts is that Edward Snowden's leaks are somehow harmful to America. During hearings about all of this, NSA boss Keith Alexander claimed that "Americans will die" because of these sorts of leaks. But... between those same hearings and other revelations from the administration and Congress, we're actually learning much more about the various programs directly from the government, as information is now being "declassified." And, apparently, President Obama is asking the NSA and the Justice Department to look into declassifying even more. So while the initial shove to declassify information may have come via Snowden, the stuff that we're really learning about is coming through revelations following Snowden's leaks -- revelations that never would have happened without his leaks.

So that raises a fairly basic question: if Snowden is somehow a traitor and putting lives at risk... why isn't the other information we're actually learning about the programs equally as problematic? The real answer seems to be that the information Snowden leaked does not harm us at all, but has simply revealed that the government has kept classified information from the American public that never should have been classified at all. The fact that only now are they looking to declassify it (and then doing so) shows pretty clearly that the information was improperly classified in the first place.

Filed Under: classified, edward snowden, keith alexander, nsa, nsa surveillance, overclassification, secrets

How Overclassification Makes Secrets Less Likely To Remain Secret

from the doing-it-wrong dept

There's a really good point in a recent Washington Post article talking about how nearly 4 million people have top secret clearance in the US these days. The problem isn't necessarily that so many people are given that clearance, but that so many people need to be given that clearance because the US government reflexively overclassifies things, meaning that basic banal office work sometimes can't get done unless you hire "low level" people with top secret clearance:

One reason for this trend is that the U.S. government has become so reflexive about classifying information, much of which is not nearly as sensitive as an NSA spying program, that clearance are required even for totally banal work.

One effect of this classification of nearly everything, and subsequent granting of clearances to nearly everyone, is that all it takes is one or two loose cannons among those 4 million clearance-holders to spill out government secrets.

As many people have pointed out, both Ed Snowden and Bradley Manning were relatively "low level" employees, but had access to all sorts of classified materials. While some spin around and attack them, given just how many people have top secret clearance and access to these materials, it's quite likely that this information has already spread widely -- including to foreign governments. I'd much rather these things be discussed in public and via the press, than finding out later that they were just passed along to foreign governments. If the content of these classified files is really so secret and sensitive to national security, then the government needs a better way of handling that information.

As it stands, the overclassification of files leads to more people needing top secret clearance, and that means about 4 million with such clearance, including all sorts of low level employees, doing basic office work, including "packing and shipping." And, rather than keeping that material secret, by exposing it to so many more people, this overclassification is almost guaranteeing that the content is less secret.

Filed Under: access, overclassification, secrecy, top secret

Defense Department Overclassifies Memo On Avoiding Overclassification

from the check-that-out dept

It's no secret that the US government is often way too secretive. More specifically, it seeks to "overclassify" documents to keep them secret when there's little reason that they should be. While this may stem from the natural reaction of governments to stay secret, this can have some pretty serious consequences. In fact, there are reasons to suggest that some of our intelligence failings, including the failure to prevent 9/11, came from a lack of communication due to overclassification. Partly to deal with this, President Obama signed the Reducing Over-Classification Act, which required various parts of the federal government to (you guessed it) reduce over-classification. As part of implementing this, federal inspectors general are supposed to "evaluate" the classification policies of the organizations.

The folks over at NextGov note the irony that the Defense Department's memo (pdf) concerning its IG's evaluation of its over-classification issue was itself classified as "For Official Use Only" (FOUO). Now, to be fair, FOUO documents are still considered "unclassified," so you could argue that this isn't really about overclassification. But, it certainly seems to go against the spirit of the effort, which was to encourage greater information sharing and make it easier for the public to remain informed as well.

Filed Under: defense department, overclassification