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U.S. Mass Declassified Documents At Midnight
Alchemist253 writes "Advocates of open government have another reason to celebrate New Year 2007: at midnight hundreds of millions of U.S. government documents that were classified more than 25 years ago got automatically declassified. Various agencies have applied for exemptions for specific documents, but nonetheless there should be a release of a number of interesting papers." From the article: "'It is going to take a generation for scholars to go through the material declassified under this process,' said Steven Aftergood, who runs a project on government secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists."
If you read the article, you'd find that this is the first time. Clinton enacted a law, and Bush (!) has enforced it. From here on in, it will happen every year, but this is the first.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
A similar process happens here in the UK every year. (That article's from 2001, but it's still current info.) There are various documents that are classified for 30, 50 or 100 years. Eventually everything gets turned over to historians, in theory at least. It'll be interesting to see how the digital age will affect this process in 25 years' time...
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
Not sure if declassified documents have already been placed online for the FBI or NSA, but the FBI, NSA and CIA FOIA sites might be good places to start. The CIA does have a few new documents online. Pick your favorite incident and happy hunting!
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