Declassification reviews ain't gonna do it. To seriously reduce overclassification there needs to be an automatic expiration on all levels of classification. And the time needs to be relatively short, such as 5 years. The process for renewing or extending past those 5 years would need to be difficult to keep it from becoming automatic.

Will this happen? Of course not. President Obama is the man who claims he supports one policy while his attorney general is busy filing law suits exactly the opposite to that policy.

Rubbish;
Do you really think wikileaks wouldn't publish top secret info?
They would publish top secret if they could get their hands on it.
Article lacks comprehension, clarity of thought, and misunderstanding
of paradigm.

Gerald
Anthropologist

A review of the classification process is needed but also the number of people with security clearances need also be reviewed. According to the Washington Post earlier on this year, there are over 800,000 Top Secret clearances. This shows a massive amount of disorganization which needs to be reined in. The administrative cost alone to manage this is expensive. Most clearances are pointless and are a result of lazy governance. Simple reviews of governmental procedures can clean up the document trails such that most work done by government officials can be done with declassified documents or documents that have been redacted to protect nation secrets.

The cost of the government is so high because of mismanagement of resources and people. There is a massive amount of pointless and needless redundancy. Each step alone may not amount to much, but a few million here and a billion there can start to show significant savings as well as enhancing our national security.

People who access or who are in charge of managing classified information should strictly be subject matter experts with working knowledge of that they are charge to protect. Office managers, administrators, etc, who have no working experience (i.e. degrees in the subject matter and/or with field experience of the subject matter) with the material should strictly be working with declassified documents. Preference should be given to military.

Subject matter experts as defined above should be the only people doing declassification. Their eyes should be the only eyes on the material. There members should be rotating members of the military so no single person has significant exposure to a large body of classified documents. This body's primary purpose should be to declassify documents needed by other government offices and should have no direct connection to the public. With programs like FOIA, (which in this new process would no longer require high-level clearances) the public will be able to obtain the information they seek in a more efficient and secure manner.

There should be a quality control process enacted to ensure what remains classified meets a narrow band of criteria meeting national security. Challenges always occur. In these cases of appeals or judicial actions, a firewall comprising of military lawyer personnel should be the arbitrators of what is released to the public. Inappropriate redactions or retentions should be investigated and prosecuted if wrong intent was discovered. This system can be open and transparent in the sense of process, but sensitive material can be kept out of the hands of people who do not need it - which comprises most of the people working for the federal government.

The system is currently sloppy and heavily burdened. It is time to greatly limit access and simplify as well as strengthen the process. This is a cost factor and a security factor.

After years in the (classified work) trenches, I heartily agree that overclassification is rampant, but offer one (somewhat pessimistic) observation.
Since such a plethora of individuals are involved, in myriad areas, in generating classified material, one needs to consider the problem systematically. And in that regard, one needs to look at the incentives (and disincentives) those working in the classification system face. And in that regard, what are the consequences (for the individual in question) if what the system decides that there has been an error? Two sorts of error are possible: (1) something is overclassified, or (2) something is underclassified.
If one over-classifies, they will suggest that, in the spirit of all this effort to avoid overclassification, really you didn't need to have classified that piece of information so highly, and you should bear that in mind for the future.
But if one under-classifies (i.e. release something that the system decides should not have been released).... it is a security breach, the alarms go off, and all sorts punitive action, up to and including criminal prosecution is a distinct possibility.
So.... which side do you think people will tend to err on?

Classification of information is the enemy of an informed electorate, the core of effective democracy, and should be reduced to the bare minimum.

Unfortunately, bureaucracies with the power to classify information continue to grow, inventing more and more needs to classify as they age.

Most important, the term " national security" is so ambiguous as to be meaningless, and as long as "national security" is the justification for classification, there will be more classification and the "informed" public will get less and less information.

In addition, too much classification is a waste of money.

WikiLeaks isn't the problem. It's reams of unnecessarily classified documents that remain hidden from the public eye by overzealous intelligence officials. And the Obama administration's fixes don't go far enough. Declassification reviews ain't gonna do it. To seriously reduce overclassification there needs to be an automatic expiration on all levels of classification. And the time needs to be relatively short, such as 5 years. "Excessive government secrecy is an evergreen concern -- as far back as 1956, a Defense Department study complained that overclassification had "reached serious proportions xerox 106r01281 hy-black ink refills. " This problem has serious ramifications throughout the vast national security bureaucracy. It impedes the flow of information across agency boundaries, obstructs the feedback mechanisms that keep policies and programs on track, conceals error and incompetence, undermines oversight and accountability, and fosters public ignorance on vital matters of national security and foreign policy. " The process for renewing or extending past those 5 years would need to be difficult to keep it from becoming automatic. Will this happen? Of course not. President Obama is the man who claims he supports one policy while his attorney general is busy filing law suits exactly the opposite to that policy.

The president's executive order, which took effect last June, established a procedure called the "fundamental classification guidance review," and it requires every agency to start reviewing all its current classification guidelines in order "to identify classified information that no longer requires protection and can be declassified."chi flat irons

There is a built-in problem with this. How is anyone to know how effective an agency has done at self-policing the new classification guidelines. This is like asking the fox to count the chickens. In the end, I don't expect big changes to ever happen .. and I don't really think secrets are all that bad. I do agree with the previous comment of auto-expiring classifications. I would have ranges (in years) depending on the strength of the classifications though.