Too many secrets
SOMEONE once said that all that separates headline news from idle gossip is somebody’s desire to keep it private. But there’s a catch. And it’s sneaky. The more we have to hide, the more we try to hide, and the more the whole world wants to know. And there’s a raft of ‘unexpected consequences’ too.
Except that they aren’t. Unexpected that is.
How many’s ‘too many’
In the 20th Century, government information was graded into four levels and documents were given classifications: ‘Most Secret’; ‘Secret’; ‘Confidential’ and ‘Restricted’.
When the Second World War came along, Americans couldn’t cope with the word Most, so as they felt they were top, we changed our highest level to Top Secret. The benefits to government by removing one letter were excellent. More in keeping with the British class system don’t ye know. One less letter saved valuable ink supplies, easier and quicker to write, all in all more clarity.
Oh – and there might have been better cooperation with our transatlantic allies as well. But that was a by-product, wasn’t it ?
However, we won’t know the vital details until 100 years later as the report on the benefits was immediately stamped ‘Top Secret – Cabinet Eyes Only’ and won’t be released until 2043.
How Secret is ‘Secret’
Time passed, and the addiction to the keeping of ‘secrets’ grew as did government bureaucracy. So in order to make sense of what was and wasn’t suitable for ‘us lot’ to know about had to be made clear and the word ‘Unclassified’ got invented.
Oh dear. Twelve letters. On every document too. There go the ink savings. Still, we’ve got the internet these days, so ink costs aren’t as important are they used to be. (Wrong !).
Things got more complicated as extra words were introduced to make sure that all of our valuable secrets couldn’t be leaked at once. ‘UK Eyes only’, ‘Protect’ ‘Locsen’ ‘Natsen’ ‘Dedip’, ‘Desden’ … the list of qualifications grew and grew. Variations to handle ‘Commercial’, ‘Management’, ‘Personal’ slowly crept in as well.
Department after department wanted the kudos of keeping secrets, so ‘Budget’, ‘Honours’, ‘Management’, ‘Medical’, ‘Policy’, ‘Staff’, ‘Visits’, ‘Toilet’ and so on became commonplace. (OK, this is a slight exaggeration as all but the last word were made up). In any case, staff visits to the toilet aren’t secret – they’re private.
Finally in 2013 the secret squirrel department in the Cabinet Office (actually, a temp on work experience) decided that plain common sense was needed.
So classifications were dialled back to just three levels: ‘Top Secret’; ‘Secret’ and ‘Official’.
But the man running the civil service wanted to show that he was a) in charge b) up to date, and c) understood the need to give married women over 30 the vote, so he created ‘Official – Sensitive’. What an oxymoron.
Meanwhile in a borough near you
Instructions from Whitehall seem not to have reached the Borough of Waking’em - as email after email still get issued with the officious imprimatur ~[UNCLASSIFIED]~.
Some say that this is because the email system hasn’t been upgraded since the 20th century; others claim that it’s to give Waken’em councillors a clue as to what they are and aren’t allowed to tell the public; but the best gossip has it that … ~[SECRET]~
One wonders whether since 2014, the UK government has instructed local authorities that they should only use ‘Top Secret’; ‘Secret’ or ‘Official’. But until the staff of Acorn ITques get permission, things won’t change.
You can’t say that!!!
Freedom of speech is one of the first victims of the desire to keep secrets. Once you accept that the secrets have to be kept, you’ve limited your freedom of speech.
Until you want to become a whistleblower, in which case you’ll want to know all about the dark web, Tor and how to go about leaking material to a wider audience, sometimes selectively, sometimes in such quantity that what’s interesting gets drowned in an ocean of trivia.
Then again, as all electronic communications and storage are easily and fully monitored by government agencies, it’s more true than ever that the pen is mightier than the sWord.
Punish those Leakers
About a year ago, the then Conservative Leader denounced the Leader of the Opposition in public, claiming he’d leaked material to the press and was now the subject of a Member Conduct complaint. The leaked document was an extract of the Grazeley Expression of Interest and marked ‘Confidential’. Clearly a collaborative production, it had six organisation’s logos on the front page.
The leader was instructed to shut up, then to retract his remarks.
But the Member Conduct committee later ‘decided’ that the Opposition members were guilty as denounced – despite the document not being an official WBC document, not bearing a current classification, having been talked about in public three months earlier, and having been published on WBC’s website in full.
Only Wokingham held that the Grazeley EoI was ‘Confidential’. All other councils ran their EoI discussions in public. Consulting?
As the person who leaked the extract to the Opposition in the first place was never identified or brought to justice, any secrets breaker would tell you that injustice has to be done to be seen.
The Last Word
Sadly we’ve run out of space for more secrets. There’s just too many.
So comments tantamount to ‘Slander in the chamber’; ‘Keep to the Answer’ and ‘Ain’t politicisin’ go unchecked, but not unnoticed.
And the back stories to ‘No legal answers’; ‘What’s my (budget) line’; ‘The Fiscal Four’; ‘We paid HOW much’; ‘WHAT did we just agree’ and ‘Three beats nine’ will all have to wait.
For now.