Obama Curbs Secrecy of Classified Documents (NYT)

Obama Curbs Secrecy of Classified Documents
By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — President Obama declared on Tuesday that “no information may remain classified indefinitely” as part of a sweeping overhaul of the executive branch’s system for protecting classified national security information.

In an executive order and an accompanying presidential memorandum to agency heads, Mr. Obama signaled that the government should try harder to make information public if possible, including by requiring agencies to regularly review what kinds of information they classify and to eliminate any obsolete secrecy requirements.

“Agency heads shall complete on a periodic basis a comprehensive review of the agency’s classification guidance, particularly classification guides, to ensure the guidance reflects current circumstances and to identify classified information that no longer requires protection and can be declassified,” Mr. Obama wrote in the order, released while he was vacationing in Hawaii.

He also established a new National Declassification Center at the National Archives to speed the process of declassifying historical documents by centralizing their review, rather than sending them in sequence to different agencies. He set a four-year deadline for processing a 400-million-page backlog of such records that includes archives related to military operations during World War II and the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

Moreover, Mr. Obama eliminated a rule put in place by former President George W. Bush in 2003 that allowed the leader of the intelligence community to veto decisions by an interagency panel to declassify information. Instead, spy agencies who object to such a decision will have to appeal to the president.

<SNIP>

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/30/us/politics/30secrets.html?src=twt&twt=nytimespolitics

Oh, wait...

it's not finished, yet. Right? :shrug:

ANY Dem. would do this (according to a poster yesterday).

not out doing the work..only snipping on the internet.

:fistbump:

Some of the WWII secrets are still in use *today*, albeit in much more modern forms.

Good on him for making progress, but do we really need to make our, oh, nuclear weapons technology secrets, freely available?

When should we declassify (if not indefinitely) our nuclear weapons documents?

After every nation, and extra-national group, has also figured it out?

I don't think we're giving out nuke secrets anytime soon.

This has always been the problem.