{"id":17919,"date":"2023-01-11T21:03:42","date_gmt":"2023-01-12T02:03:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=17919"},"modified":"2023-01-11T21:03:42","modified_gmt":"2023-01-12T02:03:42","slug":"new-york-post-behind-biden-classified-docs-fiasco-is-the-feds-obscene-abuse-of-secrecy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2023\/01\/11\/new-york-post-behind-biden-classified-docs-fiasco-is-the-feds-obscene-abuse-of-secrecy\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Post: Behind Biden classified-docs fiasco is the feds\u2019 obscene abuse of \u2018secrecy\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York Post, January 11, 2023<\/h3>\n

Behind Biden classified-docs fiasco is the feds\u2019 obscene abuse of \u2018secrecy\u2019<\/a><\/h1>\n
\n
By James Bovard<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The discovery of Obama-era classified papers in multiple locations former Vice President Joe Biden used is the White House\u2019s latest fiasco. \u201cHow could that possibly happen<\/a>? How could anyone be that irresponsible<\/a>?\u201d Biden declared. Except that was him bemoaning to \u201c60 Minutes\u201d after the FBI found classified documents in its raid on Donald Trump\u2019s Mar-a-Lago home.<\/p>\n

For argument\u2019s sake, let\u2019s assume both Biden and Trump are guilty as hell of mishandling classified documents. <\/a>(Throw in Hillary Clinton for a trifecta.) The current and former president deserve the full penalty of law that they approved for other violators (some of whom have recently been sent to federal prison for mishandling documents<\/a>).<\/p>\n

But the latest scandal<\/a> shows the need to puncture the iron curtain that both Republicans and Democrats dropped over the federal government.<\/p>\n

Since the 1990s, the number of documents federal agencies classify annually has\u00a0increased 15-fold and now exceeds a trillion pages a year.<\/strong> In 2004, Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.) derided<\/a> the federal classification system as \u201cincomprehensibly complex\u201d and \u201cso bloated it often does not distinguish between the critically important and the comically irrelevant.\u201d The New York Times reported<\/a> in 2005 that federal agencies were \u201cclassifying documents at the rate of 125 a minute as they create new categories of semi-secrets bearing vague labels like \u2018sensitive security information.\u2019\u201d It\u2019s gotten worse since then.<\/p>\n

Politicians are far more prone to condemn whistleblowers than to oppose secrecy-shrouding federal abuses.<\/strong> Consider the reaction in 2013 after Edward Snowden revealed the National Security Agency\u2019s surveillance crime spree, which included targeting Americans \u201csearching the web for suspicious stuff<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) responded<\/a>, \u201cYou can\u2019t have your privacy violated if you don\u2019t know your privacy is violated.\u201d In the same way, congressmen presume that secrecy does no harm as long as federal dirt never leaks out.<\/strong><\/p>\n