The Declassification Engine

Informationen zum Autor Matthew Connelly Klappentext SHORTLISTED FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE • Every day, thousands of new secrets are created by the United States government. What is all this secrecy really for? And whom does it benefit? A brilliant, deeply unsettling look at the history and inner workings of 'the dark state'.... At a time when federal agencies are increasingly classifying or destroying documents with historical significance, this book could not be more important. Eric Schlosser, New York Times best-selling author of Command and Control Before World War II, transparent government was a proud tradition in the United States. In all but the most serious of circumstances, classification, covert operations, and spying were considered deeply un-American. But after the war, the power to decide what could be kept secret proved too tempting to give up. Since then, we have radically departed from that open tradition, allowing intelligence agencies, black sites, and classified laboratories to grow unchecked. Officials insist that only secrecy can keep us safe, but its true costs have gone unacknowledged for too long. Using the latest techniques in data science, historian Matthew Connelly analyzes a vast trove of state secrets to unearth not only what the government really did not want us to know but also why they didn't want us to know it. Culling this research and carefully examining a series of pivotal moments in recent history, from Pearl Harbor to drone warfare, Connelly sheds light on the drivers of state secrecy especially incompetence and criminalityand how rampant overclassification makes it impossible to protect truly vital information. What results is an astonishing study of power: of the greed it enables, of the negligence it protects, and of what we lose as citizens when our leaders cannot be held to account. A crucial examination of the self-defeating nature of secrecy and the dire state of our nation's archives, The Declassification Engine is a powerful reminder of the importance of preserving the past so that we may secure our future. Leseprobe PREFACE: Should This Book Be Legal? There I was, sitting at a massive conference table inside a multibillion-dollar foundation, staring at the wood-paneled walls. I was facing a battery of high-powered attorneys, including the former general counsel to the National Security Agency, and another who had been chief of the Major Crimes Unit at the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York. The foundation was paying each of them about a thousand dollars an hour to determine whether I could be prosecuted under the Espionage Act. I am a history professor, and my only offense had been to apply for a research grant. I proposed to team up with data scientists at Columbia University to investigate the exponential growth in government secrecy. Earlier that year, in 2013, officials reported that they had classified information more than ninetyfive million times over the preceding twelve months, or three times every second. Every time one of these officials decided that some transcript, or e-mail, or PowerPoint presentation was confidential, secret, or top secret, it became subject to elaborate protocols to ensure safe handling. No one without a security clearance would see these records until, decades from now, other government officials decided disclosure no longer endangered national security. The cost of keeping all these secrets was growing year by year, covering everything from retinal scanners to barbed-wire fencing to personnel training programs, and already totaled well over eleven billion dollars. But so, too, were the number and size of data breaches and leaks. At the same time, archivists were overwhelmed by the challenge of managing just the first generation of classified electronic records, dating to the 1970...

Auteur

Matthew Connelly

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE • Every day, thousands of new secrets are created by the United States government. What is all this secrecy really for? And whom does it benefit?

“A brilliant, deeply unsettling look at the history and inner workings of ‘the dark state'.... At a time when federal agencies are increasingly classifying or destroying documents with historical significance, this book could not be more important.” —Eric Schlosser, New York Times best-selling author of Command and Control

Before World War II, transparent government was a proud tradition in the United States. In all but the most serious of circumstances, classification, covert operations, and spying were considered deeply un-American. But after the war, the power to decide what could be kept secret proved too tempting to give up. Since then, we have radically departed from that open tradition, allowing intelligence agencies, black sites, and classified laboratories to grow unchecked. Officials insist that only secrecy can keep us safe, but its true costs have gone unacknowledged for too long.

Using the latest techniques in data science, historian Matthew Connelly analyzes a vast trove of state secrets to unearth not only what the government really did not want us to know but also why they didn’t want us to know it. Culling this research and carefully examining a series of pivotal moments in recent history, from Pearl Harbor to drone warfare, Connelly sheds light on the drivers of state secrecy— especially incompetence and criminality—and how rampant overclassification makes it impossible to protect truly vital information.

What results is an astonishing study of power: of the greed it enables, of the negligence it protects, and of what we lose as citizens when our leaders cannot be held to account. A crucial examination of the self-defeating nature of secrecy and the dire state of our nation’s archives, The Declassification Engine is a powerful reminder of the importance of preserving the past so that we may secure our future.

Résumé
Every day, thousands of new secrets are created by the United States government. What is all this secrecy really for? And whom does it benefit?

Before World War II, transparent government was a proud tradition in the United States. In all but the most serious of circumstances, classification, covert operations, and spying were considered deeply un-American. But after the war, the power to decide what could be kept secret proved too tempting to give up. Since then, we have radically departed from that open tradition, allowing intelligence agencies, black sites, and classified laboratories to grow unchecked. Officials insist that only secrecy can keep us safe, but its true costs have gone unacknowledged for too long.

Using the latest techniques in data science, historian Matthew Connelly analyzes a vast trove of state secrets to unearth not only what the government really did not want us to know but also why they didn’t want us to know it. Culling this research and carefully examining a series of pivotal moments in recent history, from Pearl Harbor to drone warfare, Connelly sheds light on the drivers of state secrecy— especially incompetence and criminality—and how rampant overclassification makes it impossible to protect truly vital information.

What results is an astonishing study of power: of the greed it enables, of the negligence it protects, and of what we lose as citizens when our leaders cannot be held to account. A crucial examination of the self-defeating nature of secrecy and the dire state of our nation’s archives, The Declassification Engine is a powerful reminder of the importance of preserving the past so that we may secure our future.