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USA: The most open government AND the most secrets It is true that the United States has the most open government in the world. Anchored securely by the First Amendment, openness is reinforced every day by a press corps that publishes even classified information without penalty. Today, more official information is more easily available to more people than ever before. But the U.S. government is also the most secretive in the world. With its huge military budget and vast intelligence bureaucracy, the United States produces more new secrets more quickly than any other country. In 1999 alone, a total of 8,038,592 new secrets were created, an increase of 10 percent from the year before. And the number of "original classification authorities"-that is, officials who were authorized to designate an item of information as classified-totalled 3,846. The total expenditures for classification-related costs--not simply for classification but also for classification-driven requirements such as security clearances, physical security measures, and so on--came to a hefty total of $5 billion. [Source: Steven Aftergood (director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists), "Secrecy Is Back In Fashion", Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Nov/Dec 2000, p. 24]
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Safeguards info news
April 18, 2005 *
The Costs of Secrecy
... secrecy can be harmful, not only to democratic values but to national security as well, because it can impede the flow of information to those who need it. Recently the National Academy of Sciences, as part of a report on the security of spent fuel at nuclear plants, provided an example, noting that "security restrictions on sharing of information and analyses are hindering progress in addressing potential vulnerabilities."... The last chapter of the report details how tight controls on information are inhibiting security improvements. Representatives of the nuclear industry, the blue-ribbon panel noted, have been frustrated by a lack of information available from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has not been sharing data that could help with "early actions to address identified vulnerabilities." In two instances the report cites, restrictions on information prevented studies from being shared among analysts for different organizations examining related questions. The panel itself "was unable to examine several important issues" related to the security of spent fuel, in part "because it was unable to obtain needed information from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission." Nuclear regulators are hardly unusual in hoarding information so closely that they undermine the very security they seek to enhance. This is, rather, a norm in government. A federal court in Washington recently ordered the CIA to disclose budget data from as far back as 1963; the agency has, generally speaking, successfully resisted releasing such absurdly remote historical data, and it fought over the 1963 figures even after it turned out to have already made the information public. It is hardly a surprise that a government that cannot distinguish such matters from real state secrets -- that is classifying more and more every year, and spending billions to do it -- also cannot figure out what information must be shielded from the companies on the front lines of nuclear security and what information should be given to them. Somehow, a more rational approach to secrecy must take hold. September 17, 2003 'Part of nuclear security is not talking about it' "Part of nuclear security is not talking about it," said Gene Gwiazdowski, director of security for a nuclear power plant in Calvert Cliffs, Md. Gwiazdowski said the less information that is available to the general public about security at the plants, the easier it is to protect the facilities. Physical barriers such as steel cables, roadway blockades and several layers of fencing around nuclear power plants do the job, he said. But all of the preparation could be undermined if a plant worker provided classified information to terrorists. He said guards at the 103 nuclear power plants in the United States undergo extensive background checks before being hired. [Source: Crystal Bolner (Times-Picayune business writer), "TECHNOLOGY TAKES ON TERRORISM: Experts monitoring latest security devices at N.O. convention", The Times-Picayune (New Orleans), September 17, 2003] July 26, 2003 * VC Summer - NRC inspector surprised to see safeguards info come via insecure email April 24, 2003 - FitzPatrick event report - safeguards document found unsecure, but encryption table wasn't filled out.
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