Why does an organization like NASA have the need to classify documents? Why are their findings not made public immediately?
In: Other
Several reasons.
1. The technology might have other uses – a satellite, for example, can be used to spy.
2. They have suppliers who don’t want the technology they own given to competitors. If I design a new kind of rocket for which I own the rights, and I sell it to NASA, I don’t want to show up trying to sell it again next year and be told “sorry dude, great design but Space X didn’t have the development costs, they just copied your design from those documents of yours we posted on the internet – so we are going to buy it from them. They are cheaper.“ NASA, on the other hand, is not going to buy a multimillion dollar product and then be told they cannot review the design for errors or weaknesses, or how to connect it to the rest of the system. So, we put in the contract- you will classify these documents or I will sue your ass from here to Pluto.
3. All designs have weak points – destroying something is always easier than building it – that is the second law of thermodynamics. It is a fundamental principle of reality. And, to be safe, they need to know how it could be destroyed, so they can compensate. As a result, they have reports on that, on everything that could go wrong or could be sabotaged to great effect. They don’t want some terrorist downloading those reports from the internet and going “hey, let’s just hit the thing right there and kabooom.” Or, reading the design and finding the weakness themselves. Just like Star Wars – they don’t want to lose the plans of the Death Star, or even worse, the safety report on the Death Star.
4. They have things of great value. Computers and rocket fuel and financial accounts – and they don’t want that stuff stolen.
5. They have employees who get performance reviews, who have salaries and home phone numbers and bank accounts for depositing pay checks and expenses and other private information. All of which must be protected.
There is a name for an organization with no classification system. Victim.
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