Classification Costs Hit $7.2 Billion — $461 for Each New Secret

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The Information Security Oversight Office, the government’s overseer of the information classification process, put the cost of official federal secrecy at $7.2 billion for 2004, an increase of nearly 10.7 percent for the year. There were 15.6 million “classification decisions” in 2004. That’s an 80 percent increase in the rate of classification since the Bush Administration first year in office. The cost includes both the cost of keeping secrets and the cost of declassifying old secrets, a process the ISOO annual report says has slowed. (5/31/05)