The Rising Costs of White-Out

How much does the Executive Branch spend each year to keep information away from you? For fiscal 2004, it was at least $8 billion, according to the Information Security Oversight Office, $7.2 billion of which was spent on government information, $800 million on industrial stuff. Those figures do not include the Central Intelligence Agency, whose budgets are secret. Here are the classification costs of state info for the past 10 years:

1995 = $2.7 Billion
1996 = $2.6 Billion
1997 = $3.4 Billion
1998 = $3.6 Billion
1999 = $3.8 Billion
2000 = $4.3 Billion
2001 = $4.7 Billion
2002 = $5.7 Billion
2003 = $6.5 Billion
2004 = $7.2 Billion

Link via Secrecy News, by way of Behind the Homefront.

Comments

[mk]

$7.2 billion buys a lot of black magic markers.

[gaius marius]

2001 = $4.7 Billion
2002 = $5.7 Billion
2003 = $6.5 Billion
2004 = $7.2 Billion

who knew the war on terror was really the war to keep the american public in the dark? 🙂

[Eion]

Every time I think my opinion of the federal government has sunk as low as it possibly could be, I read something like this.

[Mike Nesmith]

Ka-ching!

[SR]

I'm assuming that's supposed to be $800,000,000 on "industrial stuff" rather than the $800,000 listed.

[linguist]

Well I guess I'm about to lose my decoder ring, too. Oh, well:

Since the amount of information that's available for the government to collect probably increases year on year as technology makes more information available, it makes sense they would have to spend more each year to keep things classified, doesn't it? As I understand it, classifying materials is also meant to protect citizen privacy and data from citizens who would misuse it, not just to protect government secrets from the citizens.

Speaking with federal CSOs has warped my mind lately. Sorry.

[Akronian]

I love the hyperbole of people who say that they didn't think their opinion of the government could go any lower until X revelation comes out. I would think that after great government programs like the Tuskegee Syphillis Experiment, that'd be about as low as you can go. Obviously, some people find government spending on classifying information, most of which probably should be classified, nore reprehensible.

[Matt Welch]

Thanks, SR, and sorry for the sloppy.

[SR]

"Thanks, SR, and sorry for the sloppy."

No problemo.

[Sean]

It's actually "Wite-Out."

[Eion]

The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment? I'd never heard of it before.

I don't think that what I said was hyperbole. The better solution to spending a lot of our money gathering the information and then spending a lot more of our money making sure that it's never used would be to gather less information. If people don't know what the government is doing I see that as a problem, and government agencies with wide-ranging powers and secret budgets definitely concern me.

"Obviously, some people find government spending on classifying information, most of which probably should be classified, nore [sic] reprehensible."
And the thing is, we have absolutely no idea what this information is, let alone its importance - it could just be lists of the quantity and type of pencils requisitioned by some random group of bean-counters, for all we know.

If someone is forcing me to give them my money by threat of force and claiming that I benefit in some way from the transaction, the least they can do is tell me what they're doing with the money. Using some of the money to hide what they're doing sounds, well, wasteful.

[gaius marius]

Since the amount of information that's available for the government to collect probably increases year on year as technology makes more information available, it makes sense they would have to spend more each year to keep things classified, doesn't it?

that in itself is pretty frightening, imo -- technology enabling the universal state.