Archive Director Testifies Before Congressional Hearing on "Overclassification and Pseudo-classification": "I have reviewed in detail the record of your hearing on August 24, 2004, to which my own organization, the National Security Archive, contributed a reader of declassified documents entitled 'Dubious Secrets,' featuring General Pinochet's drink preferences (scotch and pisco sours) and a joke terrorist attack on Santa Claus (the secret was that the CIA occasionally has a sense of humor). Mr. Chairman, you asked the question whether overclassification was a 10% problem or a 90% problem, and your witnesses provided some remarkable yardsticks. The deputy undersecretary of defense for counterintelligence and security confessed that 50% of the Pentagon's information was overclassified. The head of the Information Security Oversight Office said it was even worse, 'even beyond 50%.' The former official who participated in the Markle Foundation study cited by the 9/11 Commission on information sharing stated that 80-90% (at least in the area of intelligence and technology) was appropriately classified at first, but over time that dwindled down to the 10-20% range."

...

"What's most alarming is that the new forms of secrecy, the "pseudoclassifications" like Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU) or Sensitive Security Information (SSI) or Sensitive Homeland Security Information (SHSI), have no such checks and balances. Where is the audit agency, tracking the basic data on the number and extent of new restrictions? Where is the appeals panel, overriding the reflexive instincts of agencies? Where is the cost reporting, or do the agencies lack any clue as to how much the secrecy costs them? Where is the cost-benefit analysis inside agencies, or do they not see the double-edged sword inherent in secrecy? Where are the bureaucratic centers of countervailing power, pressing for declassification? Where are the court cases, or will judges continue blind deference to executive judgments? Where is the Congress, when the President's lawyers assert unilateral authority over secrecy, detentions, interrogations, and energy policy, among many other topics?"

(Via The National Security Archives.)