E.R. This is interesting. I can't entirely agree with your first point, but i do agree entirely with your point about the 20 year-old staffer.
I think something to keep in mind is that in a democratic society, all government information is presumptively open. Citizens have a right to know what is being done on their behalf and in their name.
The laws that we have that restrict the release of some information require there be a specific reason or need for that information to be kept from public view.
Undoubtedly there are secrets that need to be kept. The question is, which ones? And how do we know?
Increasingly, there's a trend in government to presumptively treat information as secret.
Anyone with a passing familiarity with the Access to Information Act will know what I'm talking about.
You ask for information X, and (after the passage of months) you get it. When it eventually arrives, the information is presented in the clear, with no redactions (this is unusual, but it happens). But what's interesting is how many of those documents arrive with "secret" emblazoned across the top.
What likely happened is this: Someone inside government decided the info was secret and classified it. I asked for it. The documents were pulled and were tested under Access to Information Act exemptions and determined NOT to be secret at all. So, they're sent out free and clear.
The problem, it seems to me, is the frequent over-classification of information, that when tested fails to meet legitimate classification standards.
This leads to questions: Why was the information over-classified to begin with? Was it over-zealousness? A misunderstanding of the rules? Were there legitimate reasons at first that evaporated over time? Or, was it to protect embarrassing info?
E.R. Campbell said:
The problem, for me, is not that the public does not "need to know" - in fact, in my opinion a well informed public makes better political choices - the problem is that there are legitimate secrets that the public, which includes the media and bloggers, have no lawful right to know.
I repeat that we you, those of you in official capacities, have a duty to properly classify information - something is not a secret just because a twenty-something political staffer in a minister's office doesn't want the public to know about it. There is was a handy-dandy little guide to security rules that young staff officers could use to properly (paragraph by paragraph) assign security classification to the information that was, eventually, going to make its way through the HQ and the CF. I hope such a thing still exists and I hope that at least a few people use it to assign a SECRET classification to all information that is, indeed, secret, but, simultaneously, to avoid classifying information that is, inherently, UNCLAS and, therefore available to the press and public.
In addition to our communications people (Public Affairs) I have always believed that we need a Public Information staff that, actively, pushes unclassified (and unvarnished) facts out to Canadians.
