Bipartisan Group Aims to Fix ‘Hopelessly Obsolete’ Classification System
Legislation aims to reduce over-classification and the mishandling of secrets.
COURTNEY BUBLÉ | MAY 11, 2023
A bipartisan group of U.S. senators unveiled legislation on Wednesday to reform the information classification system in a bid to reduce over-classification and prevent the mishandling of classified documents.
“I’ve known for years that our system for classifying, safeguarding and declassifying national security information is hopelessly obsolete,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said during a press conference. “We’ve got a byzantine, bizarre, bureaucratic system that has not kept up with the times, has not moved at all to digitalization, so consequently we continue to vastly over-classify huge amounts of information, while at the same time not fully protecting our nation’s most important secrets.”
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a member of the intelligence committee, said the discovery of classified documents in the homes or offices of former President Trump, President Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence brought this issue to light and got some thinking that when the government classifies too many documents, it’s easy to get lackadaisical with the handling of them.
https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2023/05/bipartisan-group-looks-fix-hopelessly-obsolete-classification-system/386215/
