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."

Comments

nothing to see here...

[thelost]

move along. Oh the irony. Anyhow, while this may be good news correct me if I'm wrong but US government has made headway reclassifying previously unclassified documents, as reported for instance here. I don't really know the ins and outs, but isn't it kind of one hand giving while the other takes away?

Give and take

[MikeRT]

This policy is one of the few things, in my libertarian-leaning mind, that Bill Clinton got very right. There needs to be give and take on both sides. The public needs to respect the need for state secrecy on certain issues, and the state needs to bring everything it can to the public when the problem has been fixed. The only exception that to me is valid would be one that could really cause a war or that would get a foreign contact of the US Government or their friends and family killed.

Re:Give and take

[Kadin2048]

Agreed. However, I don't think the people should ever passively accept classification of documents or withholding of information. Every decision in that direction should be actively questioned and debated. There should be a constant public push to declassify everything, because only when you have that impetus, will anything ever be declassified, particularly because you have a government with an obsession to act secretive and horde information.

The only legitimate reason for secrecy is when the disclosure of a document would result in direct and immediate harm to a U.S. national, ally, or key national interest. The classification of documents for "face saving" reasons is harmful and should be stopped. If we as a nation have made mistakes in the past we should be upfront with them to ourselves and move on.

Re:Give and take

[DavidTC]

No shit.

Theres only three things that shouldn't automatically be declassified after 25 years: The names of operatives and assets, and blueprints of weapons and stuff, and intelligence gathering methods, like the fact we have a tap hooked into the closed circuit TV in a certain hotel in London that ambassadors always stay at.

Anything else should be public, and I personally think 25 years is way too damn long. Let's go for five years. This is our country, we are in charge, and we can't make decisions without knowing what's going on, as I think Iraq has adequately demonstrated. (And I just realized five years would almost exactly hit the start of the Iraq war, but I swear I just chose that number randomly.)

Yes, that means that covert opts will be harder to keep secret. But I might suggest we should only do opts against people we're at war with, not, for example, Castro.

However, note I said automatically. I'm not trying to change the whole system at once. Anything the government agencies felt was actually worth classifying they could keep reapplying every 5 years.

Clinton gave a nice start, such a nice one that Bush hasn't managed to fight it so far. What Bush himself does he's classifying, but meanwhile the background 'automatic review and declassify' thing Clinton got started kept running.

What we really need is laws about what type of information can be classified, and how long. Congress at least has a law saying that you can't classify something just because it's politically embarrassing that has no national security aspects, but there's almost no enforcement of that. But we need more laws about what kinds of things you can't keep secret, like government contracts.

Re:So ...

[prelelat]

What will this even prove, if there were conspiracies I'm sure they would have added them to the exemption pile. If not the conspiracy junkies will yell out that the documents were destroyed or put in the exempt pile. People will believe what they want, its all cloak and dager when it comes to the government.

UFOs

[trelayne]

If FOI in the UK is any indication, the top topic of requests will be
regarding UFOs. We should expect a lot of revelations on this in the New Year
(Kecksburg to name one...)

Yeah right!

[ratzmilk]

There is not a government on the planet that is ever going to tell it's people all their dirty little secrets.

And they don't keep stuff buried for national security, or to protect the innocent, or what ever other reason you may think. The one and only reason any government keeps secrets from it's people is because if they were to get out, they would be lynched.

They are only ever going to release the shit that doesn't matter.

Besides, the most foul things perpetrated by governments usually start with "Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?", or words to that effect.

Re:Yeah right!

[cheesygrapes]

I love how when Bush tries to spy on the American people, all the neofacists chime in with the "if people aren't doing anything wrong they shouldn't mind if the government knows their business" bit but when people want to be able to see what the government (also made of people, but with more power and more corrupt) is doing, the neofacists instantly defend the government's right to privacy. I'm sorry but this is America we're talking about. We the people, rule America. The government should answer to the people and report to the people. Instead of the government spying on the people, the people should be spying on the government. This shouldn't be about left or right, liberal or conservative, it is about being American or being Facist.

Where?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, where the hell can we find these documents?

Mod parent as a MORON

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's go over this declassifying thing. See, there are laws about hte handling of classified information. In fact, the law specifically states what may be classified, and by who. In fact, ever classified document must be marked to say why it's classified, who's the authority for classifying it, and when it will be declassified. Further, if it's not marked with a declassify on date, there's has to be a justification trail saying why it can't be automatically declassified. The law limits those to a very few categories -- nuclear weapon design, intelligence sources, etc. There's a reason congress wrote the law that way. However, shitheads like you just accuse everyone of working with classified material as conspirators. So go fuck yourself.

NISPOM tells us

[DragonHawk]

Are they having people manually sort through classified docs in an "old documents" area, looking and the date, and moving them?

Well, I can't speak for everybody, but in the industrial part of US classified world, the NISPOM spells it out pretty clearly. One has to mark every classified document with the date of declassification. The "Declassify On" date comes from the Classification Guide delivered with the contract.

The NISPOM (National Industrial Security Program - Operating Manual) is publicly available; Google for it. Contrary to popular belief, classified information is mainly about accountability and trust, not dark rooms and guys in trench coats. Classified information is about letting information *be distributed*, in an accountable fashion. If somebody in a government position is doing something illegal, they probably just won't tell anybody about it. Calling it "classified" would just draw attention to it.

Which is not to say declassifying old, benign information isn't a good thing; it is. It increases public knowledge of our government while decreasing operating overhead. Indeed, it's generally preferred to have the smallest amount of classified information one can. It's a lot cheaper to work with unclassified material. Better to spend the money on men and equipment.

Re:NISPOM tells us

[theLOUDroom]

If somebody in a government position is doing something illegal, they probably just won't tell anybody about it.

That statement is based on the ridiculously flawed assumption that these actions involve only a single person.

If you want to do something like assasinate a foreign head of state are you going to hop a plane and try to do it yourself, or are you going to collect the right people and develop a plan?

Watergate would be a great example of how totally full of shit this statement is.
The NSA wiretapping program would be another.

The whole point of doing illegal things in government is that you have the resources of the gov't at your disposal. To take advantage of this you need to communicate with your underlings and co-conspirators.
How is the NSA going to set up an illegal wiretapping program if you don't tell them to? How are they going to keep it secret without piles of secret money?

Re:So ...

[4D6963]

Big deal, the only thing the US Intelligence has to hide when it comes to the JFK assassination is its own incompetence (as to how they miserably failed to prevent it as Fidel Castro has survived 638 assassination attempts, part of them which had been directly ordered by JFK and RFK)

Re:So ...

[rifter]

Answer, no way. That's a really lame single issue. Besides Clinton pretty much did this as part of his policy of more openness in government. And he didn't have an accident or get assassinated.

Why assassinate the man when you can assassinate his character?