The Overclassification of Information
Another classified documents leak that points to a deeper problem
Every few years or so, there is some “major” documents leak in the US that dominates the news cycle for a week or two. This year’s leak was supposedly the result of an accident by a young air national guardsman who wanted to use the documents to gain notoriety with his friends. Regardless of the culprit or motive, one issue is clear: our government classifies far too much.
Amid the daily clamor, we should step back and analyze the larger picture. Our government is entrusted to physically protect us, the citizens. In its efforts, it may sometimes need to keep secrets in order to physically protect specific citizens, namely spies and informants. Secrets that are not for the express purpose of physically protecting specific citizens are unwarranted and unacceptable.
Take, for instance, the government keeping secret the number of casualties in the Russia-Ukraine war. This secret does not physically protect any US citizens. It is a stretch to say that this secret protects anyone. This is one example of millions of secrets the government keeps from us on a regular basis. In fact, in most leaks of classified documents, reporters must sift through dozens of documents before they find anything dangerous or scandalous. Based on this experience, it is rational to assume that the majority of what the government keeps from us does not physically protect anyone.
The only people who benefit from the classification of most documents are the bureaucrats who classify the documents. A clear conflict of interests. Documents that may trigger additional scrutiny of a bureaucrat or agency are likely to be classified to help ensure that the bureaucrat’s position is maintained. Then, once a document is classified, few people in government have incentive or authority to declassify it. No wonder tens of millions of documents are classified for decades without end.
Employees should not hide information from their employers, and neither should the government hide information from us. They should not be free to classify what they want for whatever reason they want. It could lead them to intentionally manipulating public opinion for their own interests, as we have seen. Or it could result in them hiding important information from us, as we have also seen. We, as free people, have the right to the information that our government uses to make decisions so that we can better make decisions about our government. It is time we demand the overclassification of information end.