It’s preposterous. There’s no problem that’s getting addressed with this solution, this is a solution in search of some problem.
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Intelligence Community
a real-time auditing capability is essential to decreasing the risk for the heads of intelligence agencies in meeting their statutory requirements to ensure that they protect sources and methods associated with the classified information their agencies collect.
Overclassification. There is broad consensus across the U.S. government and among stakeholders that the system for classifying, declassifying, and otherwise marking and handling sensitive information is at a crossroads. Exorbitant amounts of classified data are created daily, and agency personnel often mistakenly choose classification as the default selection to ensure national security. At the same time, the effectiveness of downgraded and carefully declassified information to support foreign policy efforts has been borne out in, for example, alerting the broader world of Russia’s buildup and likely plans for its invasion of Ukraine.
Two executive orders principally govern how the U.S. government handles classified and sensitive information.
• Executive Order 13526, “Classified National Security Information,” issued in 2009,* prescribes the classification levels and procedures for declassification.
• Executive Order 13556, “Controlled Unclassified Information,” issued in 2010,” aimed to establish a uniform program for managing all unclassified information that requires safeguarding or dissemination controls.
The current system for declassifying classified national security information (CNSD) is extraordinarily analog, requiring experts’ review of individual records. Declassification policies are based on human review of paper and need to contemplate and handle the proliferation and volume of digital records created by agencies. The U.S. government will soon reach the point at which manual review is impossible. The declassification of CNSI should support key U.S. national security objectives, reflect mission priorities, and not serve solely as a necessary procedural function. Reforms should include:
• Tighter definitions and greater specificity for categories of information requiring protection.
• More stringent policies to effect significant reductions in the number of Original Classification Authorities (OCAs).
• Stricter accountability measures at the OCA level and more detailed security classification guides.