Secrecy creep

Well, I guess creep has the connotation of a slow process, which this most definitely is not. Stealthy, yes. Slow, no.

WASHINGTON — CII. CEII. FOUO. OUO. UCNI. CNSI. SSI. An alphabet soup of nearly 60 government acronyms now protects documents from public inspection without the classification of "secret."

Unlike "classified" materials, no one agency is assigned to monitor the information kept in these categories. No one claims to know how many categories there are. And no one knows exactly how many documents are being restricted.

The House Government Reform Committee's panel on national security raised the issue for the first time Wednesday with testimony from experts who say this new form of "pseudo classification" is emerging as a threat to open government.

[...]

The documents marked with these new classifications are not all related to national security. Telephone directories of federal agencies have been removed from the public domain with the "For Official Use Only" stamp, Relyea said. Even a plain pad of paper received the stamp, he said.

[...]

Too many documents are being needlessly placed in new categories that shield information from the public, said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., chairman of the committee. Placing unclassified information in such categories can have a "persistent and pernicious" impact on the flow of crucial information about terrorists to the public.

In the aftermath of the al-Qaida attacks "there is security in sharing, not hoarding," Shays said.
  Oxford Press article

Remember when they used to tell us (those of us over 50 anyway) that if we were not vigilant we might go to sleep one night free and wake up the next morning communist? Well, we were scared into keeping busy watching the communists so single-mindedly that we didn't notice the fascists in our midst. And we haven't all awakened yet. But it's coming.

Persistent. And pernicious.