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Posted on October 26, 2004
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Public Affairs
Government Secrecy on the Rise
Secrecy in government has grown tremendously in recent years, starting in the Clinton administration and accelerating under the Bush administration, while public demand for information has increased, claims OpenTheGovernment.org, a coalition of journalists and watchdog groups, in Secrecy Report Card: Quantitative Indicators of Secrecy in the Federal Government (8 pages, PDF). According to the study, the federal government spent $6.5 billion last year creating 14 million new classified documents and securing accumulated secrets, more than it has spent for at least the past decade. Despite recognition from government officials that the government classifies too much information, it continues to create new secrets at an ever-growing cost to taxpayers. For every dollar spent declassifying documents last year, agencies in the executive branch spent $120 maintaining creating and maintaining others. During that same time, the public made over 3 million requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act. The report is part of an effort to establish benchmarks for evaluating the level of secrecy in government.
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