New Declassification Process To Open 400 Million Pages of Records

linzeal writes "The newly minted National Declassification Center has been tasked by President Obama with eliminating the backlog of more than 400 million pages of classified records that are more than 25 years old by the end of 2013. The National Archives has prepared a draft prioritization plan to guide its declassification activities, and has invited public input on the plan. A public forum on the subject will be held on June 23. This may be a bonanza for the community of historians and intelligence buffs who have been left without significant source material to work with, in some cases since WWII, especially in terms of any information on cryptography, image analysis, and espionage."

ya right

[Izabael_DaJinn]

Does anyone on /. honest believe anything seriously juicy or even particularly interesting would *ever* be released to the public. "Likelihood of Declassification – Factors include complexity of information, volume of tabs (exemptions, exclusions, referrals) and age of material. There are a number of lower level classified records which may lend themselves to quick turnaround, while other records contain classified information that must be protected under E.O. 13526 and will not result in significant public release."

This is from: "THE NATIONAL DECLASSIFICATION CENTER Releasing All We Can, Protecting What We Must National Declassification Center Prioritization Plan" mmmk

Re:25 years? Let's go 25 months...

[Anonymous Coward]

Agent A recruits Agent B recruits Agent C... Agent A retires and it is disclosed that he is an agent. Agent B had contact with Agent A and is therefore suspect and Agent C may be exposed by this. Similarly breaking Nazi encryption was kept secret because the mistakes allowing to be broken could be made with other ciphers and used to break them. 25 years is about the time after which we can assume the "bad guys" know anyway.

Don't feel bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't feel bad about the long time between when the events occurred and when they become declassified. In Canada, things like invoices and reciepts from world war two are kept classified for 35 years. Operational histories of events are published after 45 years (troop movements, etc). Senior staff orders at the secret level are kept classified up to 65 years, and top secret stuff is kept for 85 years (if its kept at all). Secret length is directly proportional to how juicy the bits of tid are.

Oh boy!

[nsaspook]

Sorry, all the KGB blackmail porn was on Betamax tapes. The transcribed copies might still be in there somewhere.

http://english.pravda.ru/fun/2002/07/08/32009.html [pravda.ru]

Re:That's a big tiwnkie...

[Anonymous Coward]

no, that's a cube a bit over 53 feet on a side.
I expected better math here...