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.