When there’s little incentive against classifying harmless documents, and immense cost to making a mistake in the other direction, I’d expect overclassification to be rampant in these bureaucracies. And having documents basically be classified by default is handy if you’re doing embarrassing things you’d rather not be public (or susceptible to FOIA requests).
The claims that sidestepping procedural hurdles to enact significant reform of the system poses a serious threat to national security or whatever strike me as self-serving.
When there’s little incentive against classifying harmless documents, and immense cost to making a mistake in the other direction, I’d expect overclassification to be rampant in these bureaucracies.
Your analysis of the default incentives is correct. However, if there is any institution that has noticed the mounds of skulls, it is the DoD. Overclassification, and classification for inappropriate reasons (explicitly enumerated in written guidance: avoiding embarrassment, covering up wrongdoing) is not allowed, and the DoD carries out audits of classified data to identify and correct overclassification.
It’s possible they’re not doing enough to fight against the natural incentive gradient toward overclassification, but they’re trying hard enough that I wouldn’t expect positive EV from disregarding all the rules.
When there’s little incentive against classifying harmless documents, and immense cost to making a mistake in the other direction, I’d expect overclassification to be rampant in these bureaucracies. And having documents basically be classified by default is handy if you’re doing embarrassing things you’d rather not be public (or susceptible to FOIA requests).
The claims that sidestepping procedural hurdles to enact significant reform of the system poses a serious threat to national security or whatever strike me as self-serving.
Your analysis of the default incentives is correct. However, if there is any institution that has noticed the mounds of skulls, it is the DoD. Overclassification, and classification for inappropriate reasons (explicitly enumerated in written guidance: avoiding embarrassment, covering up wrongdoing) is not allowed, and the DoD carries out audits of classified data to identify and correct overclassification.
It’s possible they’re not doing enough to fight against the natural incentive gradient toward overclassification, but they’re trying hard enough that I wouldn’t expect positive EV from disregarding all the rules.