http://apps.facebook.com/theguardian/world/2012/dec/06/us-government-state-secrets-classified-report
Public Interest Declassification Board urges Obama to shake
up 'outmoded and unsustainable' security classification system
The US government's handling of state secrets is out of
date, over-cautious and incapable of keeping up with the vast quantities of
electronic data produced in the digital age, a federal committee says in a
report to President Barack Obama that is published on Thursday.
The report
from the Public Interest Declassification Board, an advisory committee set
up by Congress, paints a devastating picture of a secrecy system that is
"outmoded and unsustainable". The credibility of the system is under
threat, it says, from widespread over-classification that in turn is fostering
the growth of leaking of government information.
"The current classification system is fraught with
problems. It keeps too many secrets, and keeps them too long; it is overly
complex... and a culture persists that defaults to the avoidance of risk rather
than its proper management," the report says.
At worst, the report warns, the expansion of secrecy in the
modern world of digital communications could undermine democratic
accountability: "At its most benign, secrecy impedes informed government
decisions and an informed public; at worst, it enables corruption and
malfeasance."
The board's conclusions point to a mounting crisis that
faces the US
On the other hand, the increasing number of leaks of
classified information, which the board suggests is directly linked to the
mushrooming of secrecy, is being stamped on more ruthlessly by the Obama
administration than ever before. The 1917 Espionage Act has been wielded
six times since Obama entered the White House, twice the number of
prosecutions started by all previous administrations combined.
One of the six individuals to have fallen foul of the
Espionage Act is Bradley Manning, who faces possible life in military custody
for having supplied hundreds of thousands of state documents to the
whistleblower website WikiLeaks. Manning downloaded classified material for
which 4.2
million Americans have security clearance – almost as many people as
the population of metropolitan Washington
Experts say that with such a huge number of individuals able
to access gigantic quantities of secret documents, many of which should not
have been classified in the first place, it is no wonder that leaking is
becoming a growing problem. "The system is losing integrity, and that in
turn makes people more likely to leak," said Amy Bennett, assistant
director of openthegovernment.org .
Bennett pointed out that the WikiLeaks trove of US
diplomatic cables leaked by Manning included such portentous confidential
documents as a description of alavish
wedding in Dagestan, in the North Caucusus .
"That was just funny, it didn't deserve the level of security the
government had given it," she said.
The board's report is being seen by campaigners for freedom
of information as an important first step in fixing a broken classification
system that was set up on paper 70 years ago. In its set of recommendations,
the board suggests that the three current levels of classification – top
secret, secret and confidential – should be simplified into two, that official
documents relating to time-specific events should be released to the public as
soon as the event is over, and that the system should be modernised to exploit
new digital technologies.
Crucially, it says that the White House has to take the lead
in forcing the changes through. "There is little recognition among
Government practitioners that there is a fundamental problem," the report
says. "Clearly, it will require a Presidential mandate to energise and
direct agencies to work together to reform the classification system."
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