Trevor Paglen's book about USA Department of Defense secrecy Blank Spots on the Map has an illuminating incident. During the Manhattan Project, a Los Alamos physicist got in trouble for leaving an orange on his desk after lunch. The Manhattan Project security people had a policy against leaving spherical objects out in the open, probably because the atom bomb had a spherical core, but who knows? The anti-spherical object policy arose so that guards did not have to make decisions about what's left out in the open.

A clean desk policy means that you don't have to have policy enforcers that are knowledgeable about whatever you want to keep concealed. Paglen also makes the point that like paperwork, secrecy expands to fill all available space.

Trevor Paglen's book about USA Department of Defense secrecy, Blank Spots on the Map, has an illuminating incident. During the Manhattan Project, a Los Alamos physicist got in trouble for leaving an orange on his desk after lunch. The Manhattan Project security people had a policy against leaving spherical objects out in the open, probably because the atom bomb had a spherical core, but who knows? The anti-spherical object policy arose so that guards did not have to make decisions about what's left out in the open.

A clean desk policy means that you don't have to have policy enforcers that are knowledgeable about whatever you want to keep concealed. Paglen also makes the point that, like paperwork, secrecy expands to fill all available space.