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Photographs courtesy of the National Archives   On behalf of the Board, I want to thank all those who came to our public meeting yesterday at the National Archives.  We delivered our Report to the President on Transforming the Security Classification System last week and released it on our website yesterday.  I also wish to … Continue reading Thank you!

  Photo courtesy of the National Archives Today, the Public Interest Declassification Board released online its recommendations to the President on Transforming the Security Classification System.  It recommends fundamental changes that ensure the classification system will function fully to protect our nation’s security and to allow for democratic discourse in the 21st century.  The full … Continue reading NEW ANNOUNCEMENT: The Public Interest Declassification Board Publicly Releases its Report to the President on Transforming the Security Classification System

Photographs courtesy of the National Archives   The classification system was created seventy years ago in an era of paper and later copier paper.  Secret information was meant to be shared sparingly and disseminated to only those few Federal Government officials with a “need to know.”  With the end of the Cold War, the classification … Continue reading Recommendation 14: Using Technology to Modernize Classification and Declassification

  Documents courtesy of the National Archives  and the photograph is courtesy of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.   It is time to allow certain types of historical nuclear information to be reviewed for declassification and public access.  In the aftermath of World War II, the Government recognized the need to keep nuclear weapons information … Continue reading Recommendation 7: Implementing a Process for the Systematic Declassification Review of Formerly Restricted Data (FRD) Information

Photo courtesy of the National Reconnaissance Office Executive Order 13526, “Classified National Security Information” and its two predecessors established specific, time-based declassification requirements for all national security agencies.   Despite these identical mandates, a Government-wide approach to declassification remains elusive.  Separate agency declassification programs evolved into a segmented declassification system where each agency reviewed its information … Continue reading Recommendation 8: Strengthening the Authorities of the National Declassification Center (NDC)

“It is time to reexamine the long-standing tension between secrecy and openness, and develop a new way of thinking about government secrecy as we move into the next century.” -Report of the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, 1997, Senate Document 105-2, Public Law 236.   Document Courtesy of the National Security Agency   … Continue reading Recommendations 2 and 3: A Two-tiered Classification System and the Use of Identifiable Levels of Protection to Define Classification Level