Predicting and protecting the future nation  In a much more practical sense historical data may well breach national security. They may well be instances, such as in the case given in the introduction, where governments may even be unaware that there were issues of national security involved until they are brought to light. Data that was not significant fifty years ago may become of great significance later on.  To take a simple, hypothetical example. Laws relating to the ownership of the sea are relatively obscure and often based on ancient negotiations or treaties that are mostly about something else. They frequently involve custom and precedent and, for the most part, nobody really makes a fuss about the exact details. Until, of course, someone finds an oil field underneath that stretch of ocean or the fish supplies of a neighboring area become depleted [i] . At his point, the exact details of those negotiations and treaties become a source of great interest. Thus for example documents relating the Senkaku/Daioyu islets may have been uncontentious and irrelevant in the 1950 may now be of vital importance in an international dispute between China and Japan over the islands. [ii] [iii]  In a scenario such as this, there may well be vital national issues that were not predicted at the time of the negotiation or ratification of a treaty. Disputes of this nature – justifying industrial scale claims to mineral and fishing rights on the basis of historical claims are likely to boom over the next few years in relation to the poles as the icecaps recede [iv] .  [i] There are islands around the world under disputed ownership for this reason. Senkaku /Diaoyu (China/Japan) and Dokdo/Takeshima (Japan/Korea)are two obvious examples.  [ii] Lee, Joyman, ‘Senkaku/Diaoyu: Islands of Conflict’, History Today, Vol. 61 no.5, 2011  [iii] Gertz, Bill, ‘China-Japan tensions’, The Washington Times, 15 September 2010  [iv] Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Captain Paul Watson. The Birth of a New Manchuria. 25 January 2008.