i202 Fall 2010 School of Information, UC Berkeley

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is reporting that the the US government's classification and safegauring of sensitive in information is in complete disarray [PDF]. The problem it seems that there are at least 130 different labelling for such information. Here are 20 out of the 130 possible clearance labels:

SENSITIVE, DO NOT DISSEMINATE, SBU-NF, SBU/ NOFORN, UNLIMITED RIGHTS, GOVERNMENT PURPOSE RIGHTS, LIMITED RIGHTS, RESTRICTED RIGHTS ,SPECIAL LICENSE RIGHTS ,PRE-EXISTING MARKINGS, COMMERCIAL MARKINGS, CLOSE HOLD, RSEN, PREDECISIONAL PRODUCT, SOURCE SELECTION SENSITIVE, DEA SENSITIVE (DEAS), SENSITIVE (SENS), COPYRIGHT (DATE) (OWNER)

With such security ecosystem, how competent would government agencies be in safegaurding their most sensitive data?