Too Many Secret Documents? There is something which is ingrained into us and probably has been since the beginning of our appearance on this planet and it is the fact we all have secrets. If someone was to tell me they haven’t kept something in their life a secret I would have a very hard time believing that. There are certain things that must be kept secret but sometimes society and even the government forces us to release them even when it is not for what the thing was intended for. If we look at the use of our social security numbers we have a very good example of misuse. When I was issued a social security number many years ago I was told to not let anyone else see it and never to give it to anyone who said they needed it before they could do something I put in for. Today it is used by everyone and is totally unprotected. It is in so many places and on so many websites it is impossible to protect. It seems like every other day some site containing our personal information is being hacked and it is not unusual to see millions of files being stolen. That social security number should be a secret we all keep, but actually we are no longer able to protect it. Some of us have far more secrets than others. Take people who are in certain positions of the government where they are working on advanced aircraft or intelligence. These secrets fall under national defense and I think we can all understand that, but there are other secrets which just shouldn’t be kept. We are told there are 3 levels of secrecy in the government, but this has been disputed by those whistleblowers who claim there are more and some have to do with UAP information. The government admits to these levels of secrecy, confidential, secret and top secret. There are those who are convinced there are far too many things being made secret in this country. Let me ask this question. If something is declared top secret, how many people should have access to it? Should it be many or a few? I haven’t verified this but I read 1.25 million people have access to top secret files. I remember when Julian Assange published documents on Wikileaks which were said to be secret and one politician was calling for his execution. It was said it turned out the documents which had been classified as secret had to do with something embarrassing the politician had done. If this is true, is embarrassment a reason to overburden us with more secret documents and if the politician did something he shouldn’t have, should we be able to get a copy of the document if we wanted too? I am not saying the United States has the most secret documents, because in a country like China and North Korea to name a couple, everything is probably secret. What I am saying is we are supposed to be a free country and that means to me we should have access to anything that is not a threat to national security. There is another thing we have to think about and it is once our secret info gets out because of hacks or by some other method, the only ones it is being kept secret from are us. Does it make sense to you if our enemies and allies know about something, it should still be kept from us? I have to say it doesn’t to me. It is not that I want to go out of my way to see it, but once it is out I think it might as well have the security clearance designation taken off. For example, lately there is a lot coming out about UAPs, but there are two layers of information and maybe even more. There is the public release of information, the release of secret info to congress the public is not allowed to know, and there might even be more congress is not allowed to know. I think too much on this topic is being kept from us. It is not only the government which has secrets. Many corporations and companies have their secrets. One of the most famous is the formula for Coke. Other companies have been trying for years to get their hands on the formula. I am sure SpaceX has many secrets about future projects and even about some of the features of their rockets and how they can land straight up. Computer chip companies have to invest billions of dollars when they build a chip manufacturing plant. I am sure their advanced processes like how they build some of their newest chips is surrounded by secrecy. Gone are the days during the industrial revolution when one could walk into a factory memorize what was being created and how, then go home and do the same thing. Sometimes clearances are given out to easily. When I was in the military I had a job as a private in the army in the intelligence section for about a month. I was charged with burning what were said to be secret documents so I was given a secret clearance. Most of the documents were just articles from magazines. It was one of the most ridiculous reasons for a secret clearance. I had to burn the stuff and mix the ashes with sand and bury it. Meanwhile you could go out and buy Mechanics Illustrated or Science Illustrated and read the articles containing the same pages I was burning. I won’t say everything was from magazines but the bulk of it was and the rest I never looked at, just burned it. I am sure however in that dinky intelligence unit I was in which contained me, a specialist 4th class and a captain, nothing much ever came down the pike. After a month I left to get married and was sent to the motor pool when I returned. I had been told if I took off I would be punished and sent there and asked what I wanted to do? I have to wonder if we took politics out of the classification of documents, how much would this cut down on the number of secret documents? I tend to think it might cut the number of secret documents by half but I can’t prove it. It is just that I know the political thought process and any action which results in documents that might make a politician look bad would probably be made secret.
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