The Declassification Engine Computational Analysis of Official Secrecy

“The declassification engine refers to a set of applications that will provide new forms of access to official documents as well as tools to help interpret them. This toolkit will expand over time. Currently its main projects are the (de)classifier, a tool displaying cable activity over time for different embassies and topics contrasting the number of documents declassified with the number still withheld, the (de)sanitizer, an app that illuminates previously redacted text to show what kinds of information is considered particularly sensitive, and the sphere of influence, a visualization of diplomatic activity around the globe based on the volume of classified and declassified cable traffic. We hope to combine these and other tools in a platform that will accept user-submitted documents to further improve its capacity to predict what still-classified documents might reveal.”