The Bush administration, whose obsession with secrecy even has Republican lawmakers outraged, has created a new category of security for government data that doesn't rise to the level of secret. It's called "Controlled Unclassified Information," or CUI.

Under President Bush's May 9 decision, CUI replaces the "Sensitive But Unclassified" designation. Note the change in nuance.

A May 20 White House background paper says that the new designation is needed to protect terrorism-related information that doesn't meet the standards for classification but "is pertinent to the national interest" and "requires protection from unauthorized disclosure, special handling safeguards, or prescribed limits on exchange or dissemination."

Not so fast with that rubber stamp, responds Steven Aftergood of the Federation of the American Scientist.

Aftergood, who runs the federation's Project on Government Secrecy, says in the latest issue of his Secrecy News blog that the White House may have created CUI as a new "catch-all category for information that agencies wish to withhold."

For instance. he points out that according to the background paper, the new designation allows government officials to temporarily designate embargoed press releases as CUI until they are released.

Moreover, for all of its tortured, stilted and bureaucratic language, the background paper makes it clear that the designation pertains to all types of information, not just materials related to terrorism.

Aftergood notes that under the new directive, any member of the public who wants information stamped CUI can file a Freedom of Information Act request.

But, he continued, "anyone who has filed a FOIA request knows that the FOIA process is not quite straightforward, nor does it produce a timely result."

"The background paper thus affirms a view that information deemed 'sensitive' shall be presumptively withheld, and any exceptions shall be handled through the FOIA process," Aftergood continues. "In truth, this policy of presumptive withholding is pretty much how the Bush administration currently operates. And it makes no tangible difference if agencies use 100 different terms for 'sensitive' or replace them all with one term, 'controlled unclassified information.'"

We here at Nukes and Spooks wonder what Kafka would think.

UPDATE: A reader points out that CUI has been instituted to consolidate and streamline myriad less-than-secret classifications used by different agencies under a single designation. Okay, but the question stands.

UPDATE II: Smintheus, who writes the blog Unbossed, claims credit for being the first to write about the new CUI directive here on May 10.