The legitimacy of official secrecy policy that is taken for granted within official circles is increasingly open to question within the press and among many members of the public.
“Government officials must… accept the enduring reality of a media culture that is prepared to publish official secrets and considers such disclosure a patriotic contribution to democratic discourse,” said the Congressional Research Service in passing in a new report. See “Intelligence Information: Need-to-Know vs. Need-to-Share” (pdf), June 6, 2011.
This is not quite precise, since no U.S. news organization publishes official secrets just because they are secret. And no one seriously views the publication of a classified technical manual, for example, as a contribution to democratic discourse. The secrets must also be newsworthy, and even then most news outlets will exercise discretion and will give consideration to national security claims.
But it is certainly true that reputable news organizations of liberal, conservative and other editorial persuasions will publish classified information over government objections. That is the privilege and the right of a free press.
Strangely, the obverse is also true: Government officials will sometimes insist that information that is irreversibly public is nevertheless classified and subject to official security controls.
This was demonstrated most recently in a Justice Department policy for habeas attorneys regarding limitations on access to records published by WikiLeaks concerning detainees at Guantanamo, as first reported by the New York Times on June 11.
“While you may access such material from your non-U.S.-Government-issued personal and work computers,” the attorneys were told (pdf), “you are not permitted to download, save, print, disseminate, or otherwise reproduce, maintain, or transport potentially classified information.”
But the idea that information can be “accessed” online without “downloading” it is garbled, and it illustrates the confusion that prevails in government regarding classified information in the public domain. See “Feds’ policy on reading WikiLeaks docs ‘incoherent,’ critics say” by Josh Gerstein, Politico Under the Radar, June 12.
The gap that separates the two cultures of government and media over official secrecy could be narrowed if not eliminated by a concerted effort to limit secrecy to its least ambiguous, most broadly accepted purposes. But currently, the Obama Administration is devoting far more effort to enforcing the existing secrecy regime than to fixing it.
With 2000 nuclear weapons on alert, far more powerful than the first bomb tested in the Jornada Del Muerto during the Trinity Test 80 years ago, our world has been fundamentally altered.
As the United States continues nuclear modernization on all legs of its nuclear triad through the creation of new variants of warheads, missiles, and delivery platforms, examining the effects of nuclear weapons production on the public is ever more pressing.
“The first rule of government transformation is: there are a lot of rules. And there should be-ish. But we don’t need to wait for permission to rewrite them. Let’s go fix and build some things and show how it’s done.”
To better understand what might drive the way we live, learn, and work in 2050, we’re asking the community to share their expertise and thoughts about how key factors like research and development infrastructure and automation will shape the trajectory of the ecosystem.