FAS

Cost of Secrecy System Reaches Record High

06.19.08 | 3 min read | Text by Steven Aftergood

The cost of implementing the national security classification system in government and industry reached an all-time high of $9.91 billion last year, according to the latest annual report (pdf) from the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO).

The 2007 classification cost figure, which includes physical security, computer security and other aspects of classified information security, was a 4.6 percent increase over the year before and is the highest amount ever reported by the ISOO.

Is that too much? Not enough? The right amount? The new report doesn’t venture an opinion. Instead, it suggests that “the annual rate of growth for total security costs is declining.” That is not strictly true, since the rate of growth actually increased from 2006 to 2007, though it is now lower than it was in the immediate post-2001 period.

The ISOO annual report each year presents a unique snapshot of classification and declassification activity throughout the executive branch, though the data provided are often of uncertain significance and are cited with exaggerated precision.

The number of new secrets (“original classification decisions”) increased by 1% in 2007 to 233,639, ISOO reported. Meanwhile, “derivative” classification decisions, referring to the restatement of previously classified information in a new form or a new document, increased sharply by 12.5 percent for a combined total of 23,102,257 classification actions (original and derivative) in 2007. Again, no judgment on the quality or propriety of these classifications is offered.

Of 59.7 million pages reviewed for declassification last year, 37.2 million pages were declassified government-wide, a decrease both in the number reviewed and the number declassified but an increase in the rate of declassification. (At the Central Intelligence Agency, the situation was reversed: There was a 138 percent increase in the number of pages reviewed and a slight increase in the number declassified, but “a significant decrease” in the proportion of reviewed pages that were declassified.)

The Department of Transportation reviewed 380,000 pages but declassified none of them because they all had to be referred to other agencies for further processing. The President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (recently renamed the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board) reviewed 130 pages and declassified 40 of them.

ISOO reported uneven compliance with basic classification system rules and regulations at several agencies.

“Disappointingly, we continued to find deficiencies at multiple agencies relating to basic requirements concerning implementing regulations, security education and training, self-inspections, classification, and document markings,” the report stated.

One interesting data point that does not appear in the report is the number of classification challenges filed by authorized holders of particular information who believe that it is improperly classified. (Section 1.8 of Executive Order 12958, as amended, authorizes and encourages such classification challenges.)

In response to an inquiry from Secrecy News, ISOO indicated that there were 275 classification challenges filed by cleared personnel in FY 2007. The number of challenges that were actually accepted or approved by the originating agencies was not available.

The “2007 Report to the President” from the Information Security Oversight Office, which is the first issued by the new ISOO director William J. Bosanko, was transmitted to the White House on May 30 and made public today.

The new report makes no mention of the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and its continuing refusal to cooperate with ISOO’s reporting requirements on classification and declassification activity. That refusal, highlighted by a complaint filed by the Federation of American Scientists in 2006, led to a confrontation between the OVP and ISOO’s former director J. William Leonard last year, and the issue remains technically unresolved.

publications
See all publications
Nuclear Weapons
Blog
New Voices on Nuclear Weapons Fellowship: Creative Perspectives on Rethinking Nuclear Deterrence 

To empower new voices to start their career in nuclear weapons studies, the Federation of American Scientists launched the New Voices on Nuclear Weapons Fellowship. Here’s what our inaugural cohort accomplished.

11.28.23 | 3 min read
read more
Science Policy
Article
Expected Utility Forecasting for Science Funding

Common frameworks for evaluating proposals leave this utility function implicit, often evaluating aspects of risk, uncertainty, and potential value independently and qualitatively.

11.20.23 | 11 min read
read more
Nuclear Weapons
Report
Nuclear Notebook: Nuclear Weapons Sharing, 2023

The FAS Nuclear Notebook is one of the most widely sourced reference materials worldwide for reliable information about the status of nuclear weapons and has been published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since 1987. The Nuclear Notebook is researched and written by the staff of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project: Director Hans […]

11.17.23 | 1 min read
read more
Social Innovation
Blog
Community School Approach Reaches High of 60%, Reports Latest Pulse Panel

According to the National Center for Education Statistics’ August 2023 pulse panel, 60% of public schools were utilizing a “community school” or “wraparound services model” at the start of this school year—up from 45% last year.

11.17.23 | 4 min read
read more