5.1 million Americans have security clearances: Why not 320 million?

The Washington Post of March 24, 2014, published an article by Brian Fung entitled "5.1 million Americans have security clearances. That’s more than the entire population of Norway."

Excerpt (Notice the three categories: Government, Contractor and "Other" in Table 1.):

"Critics of the country's national security apparatus say Washington is addicted to secrecy. Judging by the ballooning number of Americans with government security clearances, they might have a point. About 5.1 million people — or more than 1.5 percent of the population — held security clearances last year, up from 4.9 million people with clearances the year before."  




Jagor's Comment: 

There are only 320 million people in the whole country; why not just give everybody--every American man, woman and child--security clearance?  It would save a lot of time and money: after all, we the taxpayers are footing the bill for all this secrecy.  [By the way, just who are those "others?"]

So they allow 5.1 million people to access all the government secrets, and then they're going after Edward Snowden for letting the rest of us know what that 5.1 million already know?  That doesn't make much sense, either.   

To tell the truth, nothing makes much sense in Washington these days.