Why Does the U.S. Classify Descriptions of Weddings in Dagestan?

Elizabeth Goitein, a co-director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s liberty and national security program, writing in Foreign Policy:

Former officials estimate that anywhere from 50 to 90 percent of classified information could be made public without harming national security. A case in point: In a cable sent in 2006, a U.S. diplomat classified a section that consisted entirely of an entirely innocuous description of a typical wedding in the Russian Republic of Dagestan. Similarly, the Defense Intelligence Agency classified portions of a biographical sketch of General Augusto Pinochet stating that Pinochet “drinks scotch and pisco sours; smokes cigarettes; likes parties. Sports interests are fencing, boxing and horseback riding.”