Last year, the number of “original classification decisions” — or new national security secrets — actually declined by almost ten percent from the year before.
This and other empirical measures of government secrecy were compiled in a new Secrecy Report Card (pdf) that was issued today by Openthegovernment.org, a coalition of public interest advocacy organizations. The Report Card presented data on classification and declassification activity, classification costs, Freedom of Information Act requests, Presidential signing statements, assertions of the state secrets privilege, and other aspects of official secrecy.
While new classification activity slowed last year, the Report Card noted, so too did declassification, with 8% fewer pages declassified in 2009 than in 2008. A National Declassification Center that was established in December 2009 is supposed to sharply increase the number of pages declassified in the coming months and years.
Fellows Brown, Janani Flores, Krishnaswami, Ross and Vinton will work on projects spanning government modernization, clean energy, workforce development, and economic resiliency
Current scientific understanding shows that so-called “anonymization” methods that have been widely used in the past are inadequate for protecting privacy in the era of big data and artificial intelligence.
China is NOT a nuclear “peer” of the United States, as some contend.
China’s total number of approximately 600 warheads constitutes only a small portion of the United States’ estimated stockpile of 3,700 warheads.
The Federation of American Scientists strongly supports the Modernizing Wildfire Safety and Prevention Act of 2025.