President Barack Obama took a significant step yesterday toward lifting the veil of secrecy imposed by Crawford Caligula and his GOP minions.
Yesterday, President Obama issued an executive order on classified national security information that declared that “No information may remain classified indefinitely.” The order is “part of a sweeping overhaul of the executive branch’s system for protecting classified national security information,” which includes overturning a rule put in place by Obama’s predecessor, President George W. Bush, that made it easier for documents to remain classified:
Moreover, Mr. Obama eliminated a rule put in place by former President George W. Bush in 2003 that allowed the leader of the intelligence community to veto decisions by an interagency panel to declassify information. Instead, spy agencies who object to such a decision will have to appeal to the president.
Steven Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, was cautiously optimistic about Obama’s move, saying that while it depended on the implementation, “there are some real innovations here” that represent “a major step forward” towards rolling back government secrecy... [emphasis original]
Inserted from <Think Progress>
Like Aftergood, I think this order has te potential to be a real step forward. If it works in practice as well at it appears, this is clearly a move in the right direction. Time will tell.
2 comments:
Ok, so Obama finally did something I like. He still has not stopped spying on US citizens though, so I'm waiting for that until I give him some cred on the whole mess.
I hear that Lisa. Time will tell.
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