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ISOO REPORTS A 25% RISE IN CLASSIFICATION ACTIVITY
There was a marked increase in national security secrecy activity
last year as executive branch agencies classified a total of more
than 14 million new secrets, the Information Security Oversight
Office (ISOO) reported in its latest annual report to the
President.
This represents a 25% rise over the previous year in the
production of "secrets."
Critics contend that the classification system is applied to
significant quantities of information unnecessarily, to the
detriment of national security. The ISOO report implicitly
acknowledged that there is some merit to the argument.
"Allowing information that will not cause damage to national
security to remain in the classification system, or to enter the
system in the first instance, places all classified information
at needless increased risk," said the ISOO report, published this
week.
"ISOO has asked all agency heads to closely examine efforts to
implement and maintain the security classification system at
their agencies... This effort includes ensuring that information
that requires protection is properly identified and safeguarded
and, equally important, that information not eligible for
inclusion in the classification system remains unclassified or is
promptly declassified."
"Many senior officials will candidly acknowledge that the
government classifies too much information," ISOO noted,
"although oftentimes the observation is made with respect to the
activities of agencies other than their own."
ISOO reported a total of 14,228,020 classification decisions by
executive branch agencies in fiscal year 2003, up from 11,271,618
classification actions in FY 2002.
ISOO is an executive branch agency that oversees classification and
declassification activity in the executive branch, and reports annually
to the President on its findings. Housed in the National Archives,
it takes policy direction from the National Security Council. Its
director is J. William Leonard.
A copy of the new ISOO annual report for fiscal year 2003 is available
here.
