Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Keeping government secrets doesn’t come cheap. According to the latest report from the National Archives and Records Administration’s security office, it cost the U.S. government $9.85 billion in FY 2008 to maintain the volume of classified material that’s locked away. The good news is that the cost of protecting state secrets seems to be leveling off, according to Secrecy News, which notes the federal government spent heavily on classifying documents following Sept. 11, a trend that finally eased last year. In comparison to the previous year’s costs, the total for FY 2007 was $9.9 billion.
The report from The Information Security Oversight Office provides few details explaining the total cost of the secrecy program. Data on how much was spent by individual agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, and the National Security Agency, was not included in the report in order to keep that information—yes, that’s right—a secret.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Secrecy Conceals Some Classification Costs (Secrecy News, Federation of American Scientists)
FY 2008 Report on Cost Estimates for Security Classification Activities (Information Security Oversight Office) (PDF)
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