Report: Government Keeping More Secrets

[gatorboy]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=513&nci...

<snip>
WASHINGTON - Government secrecy has increased sharply in the past few years — keeping Americans in the dark about information they should be able to access, says a report released Thursday by a coalition of watchdog groups.

It found the federal government created 14 million new classified documents in fiscal year 2003 — a 26 percent increase over the number of documents stamped secret in 2002, and a 60 percent increase over 2001. Those numbers cover over 40 agencies, but exclude the CIA (news - web sites).

At the same time, the government is declassifying fewer documents, the report said. Some 43 million pages were declassified in 2003, down from 44 million the year before — and a significant decrease from 2001 when 100 million pages were declassified.

More than $6.5 billion was spent making documents secret last year, while only $53 million financed declassification projects, the report said.

Maybe someone can help me out here. Why does it cost so much to make documents secret? When they talk about pork, this seems like a good example.

Wouldn't just going sshhhhhhhhh be much cheaper?