The Department of Justice described its progress towards meeting the December 31, 2006 deadline for automatic declassification of 25 year old historical records in an updated Declassification Plan submitted to the Information Security Oversight Office last year.
Significant exemptions to the automatic declassification program have been sought by the FBI and the DoJ Office of Intelligence Policy and Review. Otherwise some 30 million pages of DoJ records have been subjected to declassification review in recent years.
A copy of the Plan was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Michael Ravnitzky.
See “2003 Declassification Plan (Revised October 27, 2005),” U.S. Department of Justice.
The public rarely sees the quiet, often messy work that goes into creating, passing, and implementing a major piece of legislation like the CHIPS and Science Act.
If this proposed rule were enacted it would have deleterious effects on government workers in general and federal researchers and scientists, specifically.
When we introduce “at-will” employment to government employees, we also introduce the potential for environments where people are more concerned about self-preservation than service to others.
There is no better time to re-invigorate America’s innovation edge by investing in R&D to create and capture “industries of the future,” re-shoring capital and expertise, and working closely with allies to expand our capabilities while safeguarding those technologies that are critical to our security.