#FYEO

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The real scandal is overclassification

The fact that every president and VP has a garage or filing cabinet or shoebox full of classified documents isn't (merely) evidence of political impunity - it's also the latest absurd turn in the long-running true scandal: the American epidemic of overclassification and excessive secrecy.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/30/i-come-to-a-land-downunder/#but-id-have-to-kill-you

Thousands of American bureaucrats have unilaterally classified tens of millions of unremarkable documents without any legitimate basis for shielding them from public view. Meanwhile, millions of people have "Top Secret clearance" and can view these documents, making a mockery of their supposed secrecy.

Writing for The American Prospect, David Dayen crystallizes the incentives, problems and corruption that we should be paying to, and laments that instead, we're scoring cheap political points about the recklessness of presidents and ex-presidents, heavily salted with paranoid fantasies about the Danger to National Security (TM) posed by letting these docs escape the airless chambers of official secrecy:

https://prospect.org/politics/2023-01-30-president-classified-document-scandal/

Overclassification is a well-documented (ahem) problem, used by bureaucrats to cover up corruption, crimes and incompetence, as well as out of the lazy reflex to declare everything to be secret. This is abetted by members of the vast "Intelligence Community" who have rotated into the private sector and have a lucrative side-hustle as TV talking heads who spin spy-thriller fantasies about the risks of these paper broken arrows.

Dayen points to Senator Moynihan's 1997 report on "Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy," and its conclusion that if you declare everything secret, then nothing ends up being truly secret. It's a brilliant, readable, devastating critique of official secrecy. Nothing has been done about its recommendations:

https://sgp.fas.org/library/moynihan/

In 2016, the House Oversight Committee concluded that 90% of classified documents should not be classified, the same figure that the DoD came up with in its own report, 60 years earlier:

https://oversight.house.gov/hearing/examining-costs-overclassification-transparency-security/

Meanwhile, the Information Security Oversight Office - which oversees classification - keeps ringing alarm bells about overclassification, with 50m+ documents being classified in a typical year. Rather than listen to the ISOO, Congress has cut its staff in half over the past decade. 620 ISOO employees oversee the three million Americans empowered to classify documents:

https://fas.org/irp/congress/2016_hr/overclass.pdf

In 2010, the Washington Post's Dana Priest and William Arkin took stock of the post-9/11 explosion in state secrets in their "Top Secret America" report: "No one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/top-secret-america/2010/07/19/hidden-world-growing-beyond-control-2/

Attempts to liberate classified docs using FOIA requests fail repeatedly, with US agencies returning heavily redacted documents, even blacking out a report on the plans of the "Group of the Martyr Ebenezer Scrooge [to hijack the Christmas Eve flight of] Prime Minister and Chief Courier S. Claus."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/magazine/the-strange-politics-of-classified-information.html

As Dayen says, the talking point from ex-spooks on TV that "overclassification is no excuse for bad document handling," is the equivalent of the old saw that "mass shootings are not the time to talk about gun control." And yet, the press keeps buying it.

Take the Politico op-ed by an ex-FBI spook, who turned the fact that "a foreign leader might like turnip-flavored ice cream into a classifiable scenario," proving that there is no overclassification excuse too absurd to get an airing:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/01/26/the-wrong-question-about-the-classified-documents-scandal-00079540

[Image ID: A photograph of the Military Records Center in Alexandria, Virginia. Displayed are some captured German records waiting to be boxed.]

[atalinsworld]

𝔣𝔬𝔯 𝔶𝔬𝔲𝔯 𝔥𝔞𝔫𝔡𝔰 𝔬𝔫𝔩𝔶

[thetruekyle]

So after doing some solid Bible reading up at the Parthenon,

I decided to check out that one bench in Centennial Park...

[For Taylor Swift ; 'A bench for you to read on at Centennial Park' ; (Welcome Home, Nashville)]

[fyeahbensler]

10x16 Ballerina

[muldxr]

for your eyes only by @muldxr

“Excuse me, Mr Bond? I believe you left this at the bar.” The tone of the voice behind him is a sound he recognises, but it couldn’t be him. It couldn’t. Bond rests his elbow on the back of the chair as he turns around. It was him – an old friend in a new place. “H.”

While on a dangerous mission, 007 reunites with an old flame.

James Bond/Harry Styles | 9k, M | part of @harryrarepairfest | gifted to @wabadabadaba

read on ao3

[the-ravenscove]

i want more FYEO anons hehe

[forthelostones]

steadfast and fyeo returns next week 👀👀

[ultimate-007]

The complete 1963 - 72 set designed by Raymond Hawkey.

These were the current paperback editions when I discovered James Bond in 1971. They’re still my favourite overall set, especially the brilliant OHMSS and FYEO designs. Those bullet holes on the cover of Thunderball were real holes.

[hislittleraincloud]

Lemme tell ya...working with AI audio is funny when you don't control everything as well as you'd like.

Afterburn Wednesday does an average rendition of 'Nobody Does It Better', but that's okay. She's supposed to sound like a 16-year-old girl whose singing talent isn't all that great. I love the imperfections in that one, particularly how it sounds like her voice cracks on the word "(love) light" and in a couple of other places. 🥹❤️‍🔥✨ I just have to remember that she was getting 🍆 when she was singing to him and didn't even sing the whole song...also please don't tell her I said anything about her skills. 😭 😏

She makes up for it all though, because her cover of "For Your Eyes Only" is much better (there are a couple of audio feedback hiccups I couldn't cure). Perhaps it's because it's Donovan's favorite.

Anyway. This is yet another one of those things that I ended up doing out of sudden attention deficits (I was fixing her cover of another song that's coming for Chapter 8). I was only going to do FYEO but then I got to thinking about the passage in the chapter so I tried NDIB...ach. I need to get back to Part 2 of 7.

At least it's only three songs this time? 🫠 I'm still working on the video part for the Gates Mansion Secrets soundtrack.

[confinesofmy]

signalis is so scary! i have seen the entrance to the mine now so i'm making progress in my search for my beautiful alive wife but i just found a fyeo document that said some of the robots are. um. blush. repeatedly developing hierarchical ritualised physical punishment systems and um. aha. need fetish items to function properly. 😳 oh my goodness.

[kyle1]

(FYEO)

meaning~

: FOR YOUR EYES ONLY

(FYEO)

[gook54-blog]

This podcast talks about MK Ultra Its offshoots and alludes Thrre men standing (fyeo operation/ exspeomeng implemented in 2017 using Herari and his cohorts: human frequency control)

[fyeahbensler]

10x16 Ballerina

[muldxr]

Do you have any tidbits about Bond/H you are willing to share? 🥺 I just reread it but I'm deprived.

of course, here you go....

these cufflinks that bond was wearing in the opening scene were a gift from h!

[the-ravenscove]

FYEO: like more to give or receive?

Im not sure I am understanding your question, Im sorry :/

-A xx