The discovery of classified documents in the homes of Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Mike Pence has reignited a debate about the long-standing habit of the US government classifying millions of documents each year under "secret", "top secret" and other similar classifications.

Nuclear secrets, names of spies, and diplomatic cables;

Governments everywhere protect information that could compromise security, the names of spies, or relationships with other countries.

But the US secrecy machine is working too hard, according to observers.

Every year, nearly 50 million decisions are made regarding the issue of classifying government documents in categories such as "unauthorized", "secret" or "top secret", according to a number of experts.

But "a lot of classified documents are not that sensitive," Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official who now works at the Brookings Institution, told AFP.

He adds, "The classification of military plans related to Ukraine in the category of secret is legitimate," but "more questions are raised about the classification of a telegram by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs related to the arrival of the foreign minister to Israel on Monday," when the news is already circulating in the media.


And in 2016, a report to Congress revealed that "50 to 90 percent of material classified as classified is not."

And when old documents are declassified, they can sometimes be entertaining, as when the CIA declassified documents dating back nearly a century and explaining how invisible ink can be made in 2011.

Riedel blames the over-classification of documents on "bureaucratic laziness", stressing that "it is a bureaucratically safe act. If someone asks why the information reached public opinion, it can be said that it was leaked."

defective system

An unauthorized designation limits the number of people who are allowed to see the records and the secure conditions under which they are allowed to view them, sometimes without any electronic means.

The conditions for keeping classified material confidential are strict, and violators can be prosecuted.

And when former President Donald Trump left Washington, he took with him boxes of records that included top secret classified documents, and that necessitated a search of his home in Florida last summer.


Finally, a few classified documents were found in the homes of Trump's Vice President, Mike Pence, and in the home of current President Joe Biden, dating back to the era in which he was Vice President under Barack Obama.

"Some might conclude that the procedures in place for dealing with classified information are lax, but this is not the case," said national security expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, Elizabeth Goiten.

"Protections for classified information are rigorous and extensive," Goiten wrote in The Nation.

"The culprit is elsewhere, the fundamental fault underlying almost all dysfunctions of the information classification system: the overuse of classified classifications."

Cynics or playboys

Experts are of the opinion that the problem has been known and discussed for a long time.

Then-Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart noted in 1971 that "when everything is classified in the category of secrecy, that category loses its significance, and the system is despised by cynics or cynics, and then manipulated by those seeking self-protection or self-promotion."

Presidents or lawmakers have on many occasions tried to address this issue, said Ben Wisner, a project director for the American Civil Liberties Union. But I think any progress made in the 1990s was undone, and more than that, by (the terrorist attacks of) 9/11."

It is believed that the authorities classified the documents into groups, in part to "hide evidence of prisoner torture" in Iraq or Afghanistan or "to keep the CIA's drone program secret".

Beyond issues of transparency, he said that excessive classified classifications undermined the administration's efficiency, explaining that "the number of people who can be consulted on very important matters is shrinking."

In addition, the system "gives the government a lot of discretion to decide when and where to apply these laws," Wisner said.

He says that while some whistleblowers received long prison sentences, "it is very unlikely that Presidents Trump or Biden ... will face any criminal punishment."