- WASHINGTON, DC --
The government is withholding more information than ever from the public
and expanding ways of shrouding data, a coalition of watchdog groups reported
Saturday.
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- Last year, for each $1 spent declassifying old secrets,
federal agencies spent a record $148 creating and storing new secrets,
the groups said. That's a $28 jump from 2003 when $120 was spent to keep
secrets for every $1 spent revealing them. In the late 1990s, the ratio
was $15-$17 a year to $1, according to the secrecy report card by OpenTheGovernment.org.
-
- Overall, the government spent $7.2 billion in 2004 stamping
15.6 million documents "top secret," "secret" or "confidential."
That almost doubled the 8.6 million new documents classified as recently
as 2001.
-
- Last year, the number of pages declassified declined
for the fourth straight year to 28.4 million. In 2001, 100 million pages
were declassified; the record was 204 million pages in 1997.
-
- These figures cover 41 federal agencies, excluding the
CIA, whose classification totals are secret.
-
- The report also noted the growing use of secret searches,
court secrecy, closed meetings by government advisory groups and patents
kept from public view.
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- http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0509040358se
p04,1,3292855.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
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