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​The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department said officers were called to the 4900 block of Thrush Avenue for a report of a suspicious death.

A World War I-era document containing a secret ink recipe that the federal government deemed worthy of classification for nearly 100 years.

CIA Reading Room (screenshot)

The government has too many secrets, and most of them shouldn’t be secrets in the first place.

How much information is overclassified? Our best guesses range from 75% to 90%. If the conservative estimate that the classification system costs $18 billion a year is taken at face value, this means the government could be overcharging taxpayers nearly $16 billion annually to hide information that doesn’t need protection (like the sex of the dog that participated in the raid to kill ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, which U.S. Special Operations Command deemed classified national security information).

It also means the government is overclassifying information whose release would be in the public interest (like the photos the U.S. Marines took in the aftermath of killing 24 unarmed people in 2005 in Haditha, Iraq).

A new bipartisan bill from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs attempts to fix this. Introduced by Chairman Gary Peters, D-Mich., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, the Classification Reform for Transparency Act of 2024 has a lot to like — but it falls short in a crucial way: There is currently no way to tell if the bill would actually reduce the number of unnecessary secrets, because we don’t know how many there are in the first place.

The good news

The classification bill would, among other things:

• Establish an interagency task force that would clearly define the terms used to designate classification categories. This is important because most classification decisions are subjective, relying on vague interpretations of “damage to national security” to bolster their claims. Tighter and more precise definitions of the terms used to justify secrecy decisions should result in fewer secrets.
• Create consequences for federal employees who willfully classify information that should not be classified, as well as cash incentives for people who file good-faith classification challenges. This should help address the current culture of risk avoidance, which has created a situation where there are no carrots to promote good classification challenges, and few meaningful sticks to avoid overclassifying.
• Call for explicit funding for classification and declassification programs. This is a big step in the right direction because the government currently has no reliable figures for what the classification system truly costs. The bill would address that problem by requiring agencies to assess and report on estimated expenditures for classification programs, and calling for at least 10% of these totals to be dedicated to declassification efforts.

The not-so-good news

The intent of the bill is to reduce the number of secrets the government generates. Unfortunately, we don’t actually know how many documents are classified across the government, and there are no reporting requirements in the bill that would allow us to see if the government was hiding more or less information from one year to the next. This undercuts the bill’s intentions.

Take, for example, the bill’s tasking of the interagency task force mentioned above to create a plan to phase out the “confidential” classification category, which is the lowest of the three classification categories, below “secret” and “top secret.”

The hope is that by removing the confidential category, fewer things would be classified. It is possible, however, that if the confidential level were phased out, some agencies would simply classify more information at the higher secret level, rather than classifying less information to begin with. To make sure this doesn’t happen, we would need to know how many records are currently classified, and at what level they are classified.

This is where we run into trouble.

How to fix it

The Information Security Oversight Office, which oversees government-wide compliance with the security classification program, used to report on the number of classification decisions made across the government every year. In fiscal year 2017, the last year the data is available, it reported 58,501 original classification decisions made across the government (1,398 top secret, 48,056 secret, and 9,047 confidential). In addition, 49 million derivative classification decisions were made (9,615,440 top secret, 36,115,33 secret, and 3,710,737 confidential).

Original classification decisions are those made by a designated agency official who is responsible for deciding if something should be classified and at what level, and derivative decisions are made by agency employees who paraphrase, restate, or otherwise repurpose that information.

Unfortunately, ISOO has not reported on the number of government-wide classification decisions — by classification level or otherwise — in over five years. This is ostensibly because the data it received from agencies on the number of classification decisions they were making was so poor, and so inconsistent from one agency to the next, that ISOO found reporting these figures to be unreliable.

Put more simply: The government doesn’t know how many secrets it has, and there is currently no quantifiable way to tell if eliminating a classification category — or enacting any of the bill’s other components — would reduce the number of secrets agencies generate.

Sen. Peters’ news release for his bill acknowledges this information gap, suggesting 50 million new classified records are created every year, but this projection is likely based on historical trends that do not adequately account for the explosion of electronic records, and the impact this has on the number of derivative classification decisions in particular.

Congress should work with officials at ISOO as part of this legislative effort to understand why agencies don’t — or can’t — accurately and consistently track the number of classification decisions they make, and chart a path forward that ensures that agencies can successfully do so.

Without this practical metric to measure against, we would be hard-pressed to assess the impact of the necessary and well-intended legislation.

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MASCOUTAH - The St. Clair County State's Attorney's Office has announced it has charged Cale H. Dees Jr. with multiple offenses, including Aggravated Driving Under the Influence/Death (Class 2 Felony), Reckless Homicide (Class 3 Felony), and several counts of Aggravated Driving Under the Influence/Great Bodily Harm and Aggravated Reckless Driving (both Class 4 Felonies). At this time, Cale H. Dees Jr. has not been apprehended and is considered a fugitive. Authorities are asking anyone with information regarding his whereabouts to contact the Mascoutah Police Department. On December 24, 2023, at approximately 3:50 p.m., the Mascoutah Police Department was dispatched to Illinois State Route 4 at Fuesser Road in response to a two-vehicle collision. Upon arrival, officers observed that a black GMC Terrain had collided head-on with a black Honda CRV in the southbound lane of State Route 4. Mascoutah Police, along with Mascoutah EMS and Fire Department, New Baden EMS, and Medstar, provided

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The Chicago Police Department continues to give the city, its residents, and its oversight the finger. Officers just want to do what they want to do, without having to respect rules, regulations, state laws, or civil rights. Much like the NYPD, the Chicago PD got itself in Constitutional hot water by indiscriminately stopping pedestrians. Its […]

ST. JACOB – The Illinois Department of Transportation today announced that bridge repairs on Illinois 4 at U.S. 40 in Madison County will require lane closures beginning, weather permitting, Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2024. Temporary traffic signals will maintain two-way traffic for the duration of the project, which is expected to be completed by the end of November. Drivers are urged to reduce speed, be alert for changing conditions, obey all construction signage, and refrain from using mobile devices while approaching and traveling through the work zone and detour route. For IDOT District 8 updates, follow us on X at @IDOTDistrict8 or view area construction details on IDOT’s traveler information map on GettingAroundIllinois.com.

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The opportunity is through Pop Local, a program by Edwards Realty Company, a property management firm and operator of The Boulevard in Richmond Heights.

The last time so many people were sickened by listeria was the cantaloupe outbreak of 2011.

Def Leppard is set to headline the Harvest Nights Music Festival, happening Nov. 22-24 at the John Jimmie Rodeo Grounds in Immokalee, Florida.The festival, put on by The Charity Pros,…

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A man has been charged after driving through an oncoming traffic lane and hitting a pedestrian.

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A movie theater manager is facing charges after allegedly engaging in sexual acts with an underage employee.

The federal government is foreclosing on the owner of a 16-story downtown St. Louis building.

Brayan Adalberto Rodriguez-Banegas opened fire outside of a party in the city's Dutchtown neighborhood last month, killing one person and injuring two others, charges say.

Ted Drewes Jr., an icon for a beloved St. Louis frozen custard stand, has died at 96. Drewes Jr. died on Monday, Aug. 26, the company confirmed. A memorial service will be held in the future; a date has yet to be announced. Ted Drewes has been selling frozen custard for over 80 years and has become a popular treat for residents and an attraction for out-of-towners. It all started with Ted Drewes Sr. who was a "St. Louis attraction," according to the company's website. He won the Muny Tennis Championships…

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Mötley Crüe guitarist John 5 has teamed with PETA to help promote pet adoption. The rocker and his rescue dog Churro, a hairless Chinese crested mix, appear in a new campaign…

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COLLINSVILLE - Making a Difference, a long-running organization based out of Collinsville, is looking for help as they hold several outreach events in the community. Jerry Price explained that the organization serves low-income and unhoused individuals. They have monthly outreaches where they serve meals and provide items to community members. Making a Difference is looking for donations and volunteers to keep their work going. “The only goal we have is we try to help people,” Price said. “We just try to change our little corner of the world.” The organization’s main focus is its monthly outreach program at Caseyville Methodist Church in Caseyville. They also do outreach at the Community Care Center in Granite City from 12:30–2:30 p.m. on the second Saturday of every month. You can see a full schedule of their outreach programs at their website . During the outreach events, Making a Difference provides clothing, household items and nonperishable

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